|
Nénette
| Released |
4 February 2011 |
| Director |
Nicolas Philibert |
| Starring |
Nénette |
| Producer(s) |
Serge Lalou |
| Origin |
France |
| Running Time |
70 minutes |
| Genre |
Documentary |
| Rating |
tbc |
|
|
Meditative.
French documentarist Nicolas Philibert's previous features have covered topics as diverse as a year in the life of an isolated French primary school (To Be and To Have), a revisitation of the players in a film about a local homicide in Normandy thirty years on (Back to Normandy) and an investigation into the lives of the hearing impaired (In the Land of the Deaf).
Lasting just over an hour long, this time Philibert takes another strange and potentially interesting turn, a curiously framed look at a very singular denizen of a Parisian zoo. Borneo's most famous primate, the old man of the forest, the orangutan is at the epicentre of Philibert's newest venture. Or rather the old women of the forest in Nénette's case; forty years old, having birthed four children and outlived three husbands, Nénette has maintained residence in The Jardin des Plantes since 1972.
Originally, pitched as a fifteen minute short, the documentary grew under Philibert's deft hand to feature length, the craft of which, as the confluence of voices wash over our unwavering subject, is unmistakable. While the camera remains unflinchingly on Nénette's enclosure we bear witness to a series of masterful edits, both the visual and audial, that remarkably will keep anyone, either adult of child, as entranced as the passers by and zoo attendants who, aside from the occasional interjection from Philibert, provide the only voices for our seventy minute vigil.
"She's bored, right?", "Maybe she just misses the country she comes from?", "Is it really enviable to have nothing to do?", "You need someone, even at her age." The series of searching statements is almost unending and elusively remain unanswered. And, perhaps, the only real questions of Nicolas Philibert's documentary aren't questions of captivity or freedom at all but the questions of our culture writ small and made inescapable or only obtusely glimpsed in the reflections of protective glass that surrounds Nénette's pen. And whether like many of the commentators we anthropomorphosize Nénette, finding meaning and emotion behind her simian features and situation or like others ponder the very morality of her enclosure as she languidly returns our stare, Nénette remains an idiosyncratic documentary experience that isn't purely zoological but strangely topical, meditative, thoughtful and universally appealing.
- Cormac O'Brien |
