Review by Beatrice On 23-Jun-2023
One can always do something with what is done to us.
Small port city in northern France, a "family"/clan.
Jeff, the boss, practices writing poems for the supermarket cashier while his daughter and wife wither in front of the TV.
A violent and oblivious reality sees the conflict between new and old generations, fighting over the container trade.
Poussin, with the book "The Inner Calm" in his pocket, along with Jesus, must convince the schoolmates of the boss's daughter to attend her birthday, using brutally persuasive measures, while Neptune is tasked with delivering poems to the cashier to persuade her to meet her admirer.
Jacky, another member of the extended "family," must collect a debt from the accountant and thinks of doing it with a yellow and red axe but ends up falling in love with the hairdresser's wife, who in turn is overwhelmed by the concepts of Simone De Beauvoir and the play in which she is the protagonist:
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman... I was told that to please, I must be an object of pleasure... transcendence must prevail over immanence...
Simone De Beauvoir has shaken her life... when she performs, she can speak without stuttering...
But every time, the one who is supposed to play Jean Paul Sartre dies, and jealous and possessive Jacky has no choice but to step into the philosopher's shoes to kiss, love, and think together with the hairdresser, aka De Beauvoir...
Crime and poetry, eroticism and violence, a bisexual adaptation of Hamlet without dialogues, the saddest man in the world who can become the happiest while there are those who want to smash his face.
Arrogance, the sea, the horizon, plastic, while Simone's performer declares that "there is nothing without existentialism" and without Sartre "there is no emancipation."
Murders involving Mozart, poetry, and philosophy, with the fear of returning to the usual life trapped between existence and essence.
This music doesn't play for anyone... French title: "Love Songs for Sad People"... English title: "In Bed with Sartre"... Italian title:
Al letto con Sartre... Italian title
The director manages to create a comical and surreal comedy with great creative licenses, but always with an existentialist approach.
The ability to address the value of life that is embodied in life itself, in existence that is everywhere but is never encountered...
A fun and playful way to reconstruct the theme of existence that is beneath and beyond any explanation.
In the film, there is no attempt at persuasion through words, only through actions, through violence.
Love is a pretext, like art: everything is aimed at avoiding encountering the existence to which men are condemned; the same existence that
through art tears apart the veil of canonical impressions but, like knowledge, tends to remove the traumatic impact on itself.
A film where killing is not a problem because the real crime is not murder but the inability to encounter existence, and the latter can only be redeemed as an aesthetic phenomenon because absolute immanence is devoid of any meaning.
A grotesque and extremely entertaining film where absurdity is the true challenge and the true metaphor of existence: the only invitation to resistance to avoid sliding into unconsciousness.
Life has no a priori meaning. Before you live it, life itself is nothing; it is up to you to give it meaning, and value is nothing more than the meaning you choose.
23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice