Avis sur Le Sable

Paris 2002. Extremely beautiful Paris. Hot summer. Paris-Plage (Paris beach) arrives to the Seine where Mahaut spends her nights dreaming about true love and one night sees the trucks arriving with the sand. She decides to spend her summer vacations there and next day she is at the city beach. As surreal as having a beach in Paris, surreal Elisa arrives; she is strange, beautiful and mysterious. Everything changes from that moment on, Parisians love the beach and Mahaut and Elisa find true love.

That’s exactly the story that the first feature film by mostly opera director Mario Feroce tells in this Dogma95 film that becomes poetry about love, about music and mostly about beautiful Paris. The film is very arty with some stunning visuals and incredibly beautiful and carefully framed takes of Paris.

To me this is a film about images more than anything else, including the story that is clearly understandable even when is vaguely suggested and words are covered by majestic music. Obviously music is very important for Feroce but sometimes I wished that he allowed more silences with just the real sounds of the scenes (this is Dogma95 so everything is real) like he randomly did.

If you understand French here is an article about Mario Feroce’s intention for this movie, I just loved reading this article and yes, I had a good laugh reading it. And if you understand Italian go here for an article written by Mario Feroce.

A must be seen for the genre as is a very good story and European film, but also those that like Dogma95 art cinema should give it a try as is a very interesting film. I was forgetting to add that this film is Feroce's first film (from four) about "the elements" and this one represents earth; I'm looking forward to see the other three that I imagine will be done after water, wind and fire.

Finally I found a lesbian interest movie that is good art cinema and is a movie that you can see again and again, and find many more things that you missed the first time.

Enjoy!