1971 feature from Jean Rouch, perhaps re-enacted /invented, or neither, certainly filmed amongst everyday life
This film is perhaps Rouch’s funniest. It looks most like what we take a verite documentary to be (a genre Rouch helped invent) with lots of head-close-to-the-camera, a single wandering protagonist, with the camera effectively in his shoulder in the first half of the film. From there it moves into quite a consistent narrative.
This film is indeed very funny, though never patronising to the customs it subjects to defamiliarization. It adopts a less ‘gritty’, one could perhaps even say realist, approach than usual to its subject matter, though still asks interesting questions. Of the Rouch we have seen it is perhaps his most ‘European’ film, though this is certainly a matter of degree.
With the ability to place its ‘actors’ in situations, conjunctions, beyond the usual, again we have brought out what we remember of ourselves, it what appears ineluctably strange. This would be a fine task; but Rouch further lets us ask; why?
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