Ava (film)

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Movie
German title Ava
Original title Ava
Country of production France
original language French , Spanish
Publishing year 2017
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Léa Mysius
script Léa Mysius
production Jean-Louis Livi
music Florencia Di Concilio
camera Paul Guilhaume
cut Pierre Deschamps
occupation

Ava is a French movie from the year 2017. With its elaborate coming-of-age - drama , the director and screenwriter came Léa Mysius first time with a feature film appearance. It received just as much attention at the premiere in Cannes in 2017 as the debut of Noée Abita in the role of the 13-year-old heroine.

action

Ava was only 13 when she was diagnosed with retinopathia pigmentosa . Her prognosis is bad: she will soon be night blind, then lose peripheral vision and finally lose sight completely. After the initial shock, she courageously takes countermeasures, including an exercise program in which she performs various actions blindfolded to sharpen her other senses. She is tough and strong-willed, unlike her single mother, who is more concerned with herself and her unstable love life, promises Ava “great summer holidays”, but then hires her back as nanny for the little half-sister at the next best opportunity.

A black dog that she meets for the first time on the beach makes Ava want to own one. When her mother doesn't respond, she steals him without further ado, calls him Lupo ("wolf") and involves him in her training. After a swim in the sea, she faces its owner, a somewhat older boy, evidently an outsider like herself. Although attracted to him, she follows her escape reflex. Soon afterwards Lupo appears alone with her, bloody but without a wound. Ava concludes correctly, finds the boy injured in front of his dwelling on the beach, helps him and gradually overcomes his defensive stance. The ice breaks completely when both of them make themselves masters of the beach for a short time by robbing defenseless bathers in archaic warrior clothes. The police did not have to wait long, including for Ava's mother to report, and wanted to arrest 18-year-old Juan. Ava intervenes and forces them to flee together, rifle at the ready.

During a long respite, Ava learns why Juan stays away from his people, Spanish Roma , and wants to get away from them completely: It is his relationship with the 16-year-old Jessica, who has already been “promised”, that has not yet cooled down; his injury resulted from a fight with his rival. Ava tries to help Juan get to his car, whereupon he develops a plan that she should smuggle in as a helper at the imminent wedding of Jessica and, when the opportunity arises, bring his car keys and papers into her possession. She almost succeeds, but the police storm the party, believing that Juan is among the guests. In fact, he has since sneaked in to help Ava. They escape the police again in a very risky way. A car catches up with them on the way. It's Juans, chauffeured by Jessica, still dressed in full bridal gown. In addition to the getaway car, she also gives them both her veil - as a token of her love for Juan and her solidarity with the couple.

Emergence

The idea for Ava arose from an image that the director Léa Mysius had long carried: A wild black dog runs across a colorful beach filled with people. From this "hidden object", with the contrast between the wild and the artificial, she then developed the opening sequence of her film.

The subject of blindness, which is unusual for a coming-of-age film , came to mind when Mysius was already working on the script for Ava . She wanted to present this to the film school as her thesis; She was pressed for time, suffered from migraines and could therefore only write in the dark. This automatically led her to grapple with the question of what it means not to see anymore. According to Mysius, the diagnosis had a catalytic effect on her plot and her protagonist ; the urgency to deal with the rapidly progressing disease is driving the film forward and accelerating Ava's puberty , her rapid maturation from a child girl to a young woman.

The resulting requirement profile for the actress to be found made Mysius and her crew fear a lengthy search. The opposite was the case. “The right one” appeared on the first day of the casting. Immediately it was agreed that Noée Abita brought everything that was wanted: "[...] this vagueness, this expression of a child woman, the very intense look" - and as a 17-year-old also the "right" age, because Mysius only wanted to impose the nude scenes intended for Ava on a slightly more mature actress. On the other hand, it meant getting Abita not only to look like a 13-year-old, but also to act like that; The director spent two months working with her voice and body.

Mysius also took a lot of time to get to know the Roma world and to portray it as realistically as possible in her film. Since she was more concerned with authenticity than with acting professionalism, she consequently opted for amateur actors of the appropriate origin. Your male protagonist is doubly authentic: He comes from an Andalusian Roma family and is really called Juan. Mysius also wants his character to be understood as a homage to one of her classmates, a Roma who has been discriminated against by classmates and teachers - an experience that has awakened her political awareness.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Ava . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 179647 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ 'Ava' - Interview with the director Léa Mysius , Arte , May 23, 2017, accessed on October 10, 2018.
  3. ↑ Film review and interview with director Léa Mysius , Sennhausers Filmblog, September 22, 2017, accessed on October 10, 2018.