Alone Again: The Films of Axelle Ropert
In the United States we do not have a long tradition of film critics becoming filmmakers. Critics usually remain critics and filmmakers stay filmmakers. There is a line that is rarely crossed. But in France there is no such line. It is a long tradition going back to the New Wave and every so often renewing itself – Assayas in the 80’s, La lettre du cinéma in the 90’s, etc. The critic started from the position of a burgeoning filmmaker and shaped their critique based on the sounds and images, but also based on their desires – what is the film that we would make? So criticism becomes a site for theory, to test out future ideas, to make wild claims.
Axelle Ropert comes from this tradition. Originally, her dream is to write novels, but her allegiance changes to cinema. She is a founding member and former editor-in-chief of La lettre du cinéma. She writes about Manoel de Oliveira, spy films and, perhaps mostly importantly, actors. She begins to write the films of Serge Bozon (the father of her children), Mods and La France. And, in 2005, she directs a medium-length film, Étoile violette.
But the taste for criticism does not end once she makes the jump to directing. She continues and writes for outlets such as Vertigo and Les Inrockuptibles. In the English-speaking world we sadly do not have access to the majority of her criticism, but when we do get something, such as her 2014 Film Comment interview upon the release of Tirez la langue, mademoiselle or her long discussion on whether an European star system exists, it is frankly an event. This type of cinephilic discourse points the way toward new avenues of appreciation, not only of her own films, but toward hidden avenues of cinema. In the aforementioned interview, she mentions that “people don’t understand how such an uncompromising woman can make such gentle, classical films.” And it’s true that the films themselves are simple, straightforward, but they contain mysteries of behavior, grace, they feel lived in. This type of cinema feels deeply unfashionable. Indeed when her latest film, Petite Solange, premiered in Locarno it quickly got lost in the shuffle. It is not the type of cinema which takes up space, which calls attention to itself with a pointless virtuosity. Modesty never won any awards.
Axelle Ropert makes films about people who are sad and alone. But she does not make films which give in to this loneliness. They explore it, they attack it, and find a way forward. She would never film cliched images of isolation, lost souls in a big city or something like that. There is always a community, a family, which pushes us. The films themselves are gentle, they are not full of radical gestures or ruptures, they flow continuously with a logic that carries them through. But this gentleness is hard-earned and is not at odds with the deep sadness of her films.
In order to explore her work in more detail, we are launching the Profiles column. For Axelle Ropert, we will devote a series of posts to her work, as a director and critic. This post will serve as an index of our texts.
- Love at First Sight / Alone Again (text by Jhon Hernandez)
- Secret Violence (text by Jhon Hernandez)
- Translation Corner #1 – Axelle Ropert in Cahiers du Cinéma
- Étoile violette (text by Nathan Rogers Hancock)
- Translation Corner #2 – The Empty Hour: An Inquiry Into French Existential Films (text by Axelle Ropert)
- Translation Corner #6 – Axelle Ropert on #MeToo, Judith Godrèche, Cinephilia and more
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