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l'Humanité
Crop section
Article published in the 16 July 2004 edition
Innocence permanently lost
Les Innocents, directed by David Noir, plunges us into an abyss of vulgarity.
Music from the Woodstock repertoire to open, among other things, the sound material of what could evoke a happening from the 70s. In the background, young, idle men and women pass by in black and white, their faces brushing against each other and their bodies trying to get closer. In front of this film, young people in loincloths move lazily.
Everyone's face has an air of candour, a strong daze and a smile that is sometimes disdainful. Mouths open here and there to recite, in a way that is intended to be incongruous, striking - and possibly shocking - aphorisms with all sorts of homonyms, if possible salacious. Among them, "France, that fat woman", "a good joke pulled by the Chleus", or more softly: "Hear, good people, the lament of the escalope woman". We are waiting instead. "Stewball" fills the air, and a monkey stares at us from the screen. The actors walk around the stands, stand under the spectator's nose, take his hand, stick to him, playing the primate. Bodies undulate two by two, back to back, with obvious contentment. A choral song in English is sung by beautiful strands of voices, really; there will be others. On the screen, an English film, from the fifties perhaps, in which a woman and a child are talking. Afterwards, everyone will strip off their clothes with ostentatious greed. Bodies in their first courageous, raw truth, then the actors will proudly reveal this nudity, with an active presence and a well-regulated cohesion, all of very physical comings and goings supported by shocking phrases. On the floor, the entangled bodies form a heap: a girl palpates the male sexes, assesses their softness, a little disappointed. "Someone wants to stick my stamp with her pussy," says someone. We shrug discreetly, noting that this gratuitous crudity of the tongue tells us very little. These girls and boys will then put on white shirts, platinum blonde wigs; they will sing, tap their feet. In a note, director David Noir writes: "Those little blond Aryans we all think we are. Feeling of Western superiority; we would like to defend ourselves; it sticks to our necks like shit [.] we convince ourselves, we denazify ourselves. It's beautiful. So be it. In this immaculate white, this peroxide blond, we also read the theme of a scorned childhood, through the motif of paedophilia, evoked here with a second degree, which in turn tells us that it wants to disturb, to disturb. The whole play calls for a prime innocence where one must enjoy without hindrance, evacuate orally, through images, what is never unhealthy because it "is". So again, why not? But here we have not been touched by an ounce of innocence, nor even by its loss. Why not? By dint of pointing out its reverse side so loudly, by means of unbridled provocation, the very contours of the fragility of innocence had been altered. And what can we say about this enjoyment that we invite here to overflow the body and the mind so that it is not shameful? Why stuff ourselves with this precept beyond a precise meaning (because we need one)? What is being said here that has not already been repeated? There is one thing that is perhaps more clearly perceived: before jouissance, there must be desire, which is sometimes obscene - and not in terms of morality - when it is exhibited. We would have liked it to be more subtle here, and these bodies of raw, often beautiful nudity, we know that it is not from them that vulgarity oozes.
