The girl who turns the pages

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The girl who turns the pages
Original title La Tourneuse de pages
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2006
length 85 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Denis Dercourt
script Denis Dercourt
production Michel Saint-Jean
music Jérôme Lemonnier
camera Jérôme Peyrebrune
cut François Gédigier
occupation

The girl who turns the pages (original title: La Tourneuse de pages ) is a French film drama from 2006. The thriller by the classical musician and cinematic lateral entrant Denis Dercourt follows the story of a plan for revenge in the world of chamber music.

action

Ten-year-old Mélanie is a talented piano player from a middle-class family who is taking the entrance examination for a conservatory . The girl initially plays flawlessly and confidently. But during her performance, the chairman of the jury, the pianist Ariane Fouchécourt, waves to an admirer to grant her autograph after she had turned off her first attempt in the hallway before the audition. This tactlessness brings the girl out of the game; if she does not concentrate, she makes mistakes and fails. Silently, full of anger and with difficulty holding back her tears, she leaves. At home she locks her piano and puts her small Beethoven bust in the cupboard.

A decade later - she has given up playing the piano - she is doing an internship in a law firm. Your boss Jean Fouchécourt is looking for someone to look after his little son Tristan during the holidays. Mélanie offers herself and gets to know the lawyer's wife - it is Ariane who ruined Mélanie's dream of a music career. But she doesn't recognize the young girl again.

At the luxurious country estate of the Fouchécourts, forty kilometers from Paris, Mélanie takes care of Tristan and also works for Ariane as a skilled music turner . The concert pianist, who also plays in a trio , has an important radio appearance in the next week, but has suffered from severe stage fright since a rear-end collision . Mélanie's support gives her security, however, and she asks the girl to help her with the performance. This becomes a success for the trio. After the event, Mélanie kisses the pianist tenderly on the cheek. Ariane is surprised but does not reject her. The violinist of the trio had already said to Ariane that Mélanie looked at her with "special intensity".

Ariane's husband goes on a business trip and leaves his wife and son alone with Mélanie. At the pool, Ariane noticed the girl's charms. While the three of them play hide and seek, Mélanie comes closer again. When buying a dress together, Ariane watches Mélanie change. At the next appearance by Ariane, Mélanie suddenly disappeared; the pianist experiences a fiasco. Shortly afterwards, Mélanie reappears and there is another tender touch.

On the eve of her departure, Mélanie Ariane asks for an autograph. Ariane confesses her love on the back of the picture and expresses her wish to see her again. The next morning Mélanie pushes this card into the pile of mail on Jean's desk and leaves. When Jean finds the autograph card, Ariane collapses after Melanie's betrayal. In the final shot, you see Mélanie, satisfied by her successful revenge, on the way to the train station.

background

The director Denis Dercourt is a violist and has been teaching at the Strasbourg Conservatory since 1995. There are also “ turners ” in chamber music. Dercourt asked Déborah François to watch intensely films intended for the role of Mélanie - including Everything About Eva (1950), in which two stage actresses compete for success, Teorema , where the arrival of a visitor causes chaos in the family, and films by Claude Chabrol .

The piano pieces in the film are played by Jérôme Lemonnier, Schubert's Notturno , whose piano part Ariane rehearses for the decisive prelude, is played by the Wanderer trio with Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian (violin), Raphaël Pidoux (violoncello) and Vincent Coq (piano).

criticism

Hardly a critic who did not feel reminded of Chabrol in this film, of his psychodramas and thrillers, which dissect the paralysis of the rural French bourgeoisie. Mélanie's father is also a butcher, as in Chabrol's The Butcher .

Director Dercourt saw a common feature between music and filmmaking in the alternation of tension and relaxation. The criticism attested him a precise, crystal clear, cool, simple and in it almost brutal narrative style. It gives a direct feeling for the importance of discipline in music, which is also used in this film in a clever way. The narrative is probably formulaic and ritualized, and not only based on models from Chabrols. Dercourt believes that a genre film with its rules is like a piece of classical music from which one can create freer forms; he feels relieved by the guidelines.

Nevertheless, the film has surprising plot twists. Some estimated that the motifs were not unambiguous, but rather a floating between contradicting feelings of tenderness and brutality, love and revenge, and that the film could not be determined in terms of genre. Therefore, regret was expressed that a too clear ending would put an end to the nuances in mood, theme and genre.

When leading the actors, Dercourt considers the tempo and the externally visible, physical element to be decisive for conveying inner states. He also stated that the moments of tension were filmed very cold. According to the criticism, the characters' feelings come to the fore in “silent gestures, foreboding looks, speaking hints”, which contrasts with the clear narrative structure. The performance of the entire ensemble received praise. Deborah François plays Mélanie in a very reserved and minimalist way. Mélanie hardly talks about herself, she remains a silent, patient shadow who smiles politely and does not seek to attract any attention. Behind it lurks an obsessive character who cleverly and skillfully slays his victim.

Mélanie's how-you-me-so-me-you consists firstly of a botched musical performance and secondly of the destruction of a life plan. According to the critics, it is easy to sympathize with her “distinguished”, “beautiful” revenge, because it is refreshingly anarchic. Mélanie leaves Ariane in ignorance of why she did all this, which, according to Dercourt, makes revenge even more cruel.

Review mirror
  • epd film from May 2007 (very positive review, praises the sophistication of the script)
  • Der Spiegel No. 18/2007 (positive short review, mentions the sophistication of staging and use of music)
  • Die Welt vom May 3, 2007 (admires the quiet, austere elegance of the work)
  • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from May 3, 2007 (very positive; finds "sounds and nuances that would only exist in French cinema")
  • Frankfurter Rundschau from May 3, 2007 (very positive, recognizes high art, especially in the perfect execution of the rules of the genre)
  • Neue Zürcher Zeitung of February 9, 2007 (positive review, which emphasizes the precise staging and presentation)
  • taz dated May 3, 2007 (tends to be positive, praises social observation and tension, but regrets that the tension-generating ambivalence is lost through the overly clear ending)

Awards

The film was nominated for the following awards:

César 2007

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for The Girl Who Turns the Pages . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , April 2007 (PDF; test number: 109 858 K).
  2. ↑ a b Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 3, 2007, p. 36: Beethoven in a closet .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Denis Dercourtt in conversation with the Berliner Zeitung, May 3, 2007, p. K02:
  4. ↑ Matthias Lerf: Destructive Blonde . In: SonntagsZeitung , January 28, 2007, culture, abpfiff, p. 51; Liberation , October 19, 2005: Cette force de Sonia, j'aimerais en garder un peu .
  5. ↑ IMDb .
  6. ↑ epd film May 2007; FAZ, May 3, 2007; Frankfurter Rundschau, May 3, 2007; NZZ, February 9, 2007; taz May 3, 2007
  7. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau, May 3, 2007; taz May 3, 2007.
  8. ↑ epd film May 2007; Frankfurter Rundschau, May 3, 2007; NZZ, February 9, 2007
  9. ↑ a b c d Frankfurter Rundschau, May 3, 2007, p. 42: The wrong side
  10. ↑ The girl who turns the pages . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 2007, p. 165 ( online ).
  11. ↑ a b c d Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 9, 2007, p. 49: Cold female revenge in minor
  12. ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, February 9, 2007, taz, May 3, 2007, cf. also Der Spiegel, April 30, 2007, according to which Mélanie “more or less by chance” turns the page.
  13. ↑ a b taz, the daily newspaper, May 3, 2007, p. 16: Razor-sharp piano playing
  14. ↑ a b Die Welt, May 3, 2007, p. 29: Cool revenge