Berlin: Here’s to the Future
rank Beauvais’ first feature opens with a title card stating that the film we’re about to see is solely comprised of clips from over 400 movies that the 49-year-old French filmmaker watched between April and October of 2016. Separated from his partner and mourning the loss of his father, Beauvais holed up in his home in a remote village in Alsace and immersed himself in cinema. Speaking in voiceover, he describes the process: “Three, four, even five films a day. Anything goes. I can’t stop…I literally sink into others’ films…I go to bed, and I start again the next day.” To say that seeing in the context of the Berlinale, a festival especially conducive to watching at least three or four but usually five or more films per day, was appropriate is an understatement; the metaphor almost writes itself. And indeed, it got me thinking about time and the ritual masochism of the festival experience, where the mad rush to see movies is more often than not deflated by the work itself. It can all seem rather futile, especially on those five-or-six-film days. But then you make a discovery like and you remember why you put yourself through such needless torment in the first place.
