Gustave

Presented in the Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC – National Centre for Cinematography)’s “Découverte d’une œuvre” (Discovering Work) collection, this first short film, produced by Régine Chopinot in partnership with the head cameraman Etienne Becker, was commissioned by the Musée d’Orsay to celebrate the centenary of the Eiffel Tower.

In the centre of a circle of papier-mâché buildings – evoking Paris and imagined by Marc Caro – an anthropomorphized Eiffel Tower (Rita Quaglia) tramples the dark, mineral-powder covered ground with its clodhoppers. Dressed in a strange, Jean Paul Gaultier-designed, riveted, square-shaped-legged costume, this suspended Eiffel Tower plays with gravity: flyovers, takeoffs, seesaw effects, amortized… With her camera, Régine Chopinot got as close as possible to the movements, inspired by the “design principle of this excessively baroque tower” [1]. As such, she began by shooting the feet-foundation, then the arch, the neck and “that which Mr Eiffel used as his office” [2], which she let explode in the last few seconds, “metaphor for the head – according to Annie Suquet – this mecca of mental control that Chopinot had never ever stopped eluding right from the very beginning” [3].

In this “fantasy” [4] as she called it herself, Régine Chopinot was once again accompanied by the choreologist Noémie Perlov, and the performers Frédéric Werlé and Rita Quaglia, to transpose the experience of “Rossignol” (Nightingale) unto a more narrative, less experimental, yet such as audacious scale.

[1] R. Chopinot, Les Chopinotes, No. 2, March 1988, p.1.

[2] R. Chopinot quoted by A. Suquet, “Chopinot”, Le Mans: Cénomane publishing house, 2010, p.17.

[3] Annie Suquet, op. cit., p.17.

[4] R. Chopinot, Les Chopinotes, op. cit., p.1.

Programme extract

“As the title suggests, an unconventional tribute is paid by the choreographer Régine Chopinot to a certain Gustave Eiffel and his famous Parisian monument, from which she only remembered the feet. An intriguing figure with square, riveted trousers, wearing clodhoppers that make the char-gravel-covered ground grind, then he glides and swirls over a Paris made of papier-mâché, designed by Marc Caro, with costumes by Gaultier. Over and over again, with circular concentric movements, sketching dance steps, flying through the air, carrying away Gustave himself, clinging unto his creature, the Tower places itself in the centre of the stage and then disintegrates into a pyrotechnic fantasy. An audacious, dreamlike film veiled in a sombre, blue, mysterious atmosphere.”

Patrick Bossatti (“Images de la Culture” catalogue – CNC)

Updating: February 2012