France

SUZANNE

CREDITS

35mm - colore - 92’

Direction: Viviane Candas
Screenplay: Viviane Candas
Photography: Jacques Loiseleux
Editing: Claudine Dumoulin
Set decorator: Max Berto
Sound: Jean-Luc Bardyn
Cast: Patrick Bauchau, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Christine Citti, Edith Scob, Elisabeth Macocco, Jalil Naciri, Guesch Patti, Claude Perron.
Producer: Paulo Branco
Production: Gemini Films
World sales: Gemini Films, Elisabeth Perlié, 34 Boulevard Sebastopol, 75004 Paris France, Tel.: +33 1 44 17 17, Fax: +33 1 44 17 25, email: sales@gemini-films.com website: gemini-films.com

SYNOPSIS

After the death of his musician wife, 70-something Franck feels lost. He tries staying at the homes of his skirtchasing friend Max, then his daughter Sabine, but it will take meeting Suzanne to give him back his taste for life. She’s not from his world, nor his age, but she’ll still become his new love.

THE DIRECTOR: VIVIANE CANDAS

She shoots several short films in the mid 1980’s to 1990’s on differents themes such as the young immigrants in Marseille or the ascent to power of the National Front in the same town. In 1994, the director realises a medium-length film on the birth of modern painting between 1870 and 1914. Afterwards she devotes to the drawing her first feature film which is finally completed in 2002. Les Baigneuses, shot in HD caméra, follows the stories of six girls working in a peep show and of their meeting with a client different from the others played by Jean-Pierre Kalfon

DIRECTOR’S NOTES

While the firsty wave of baby-boomers are by now in their sixties, our era is more and more repulsive towards physical ageing, but luckily, they acquire charm as a good wine. I wanted that the tempo of the film conveyed the impulse of life of a human being mature and playful at the same time, near to wisdom but still able to desire. The more the conscience of the world gets stronger, the more the feeling of existing becomes precious. It is then that time expands. This film portrays a «résilience » (a terme by Boris Cyrulnik), the power of any human being to carry on afetr a choc, keeping the memory of the pain. The modern hero will be able to overcome his destiny and love at any age of his life.

FILMOGRAPHY

2002 The Bathers (Les Baigneuses)
1994 L’estaque, doc.

SELECTED FESTIVAL AND AWARDS

Locarno
Chicago: Terra Nova Silver Images Award