In «Play», Max Boublil is nostalgic for the present

Cinema Wednesdays - Jonas Follonier

This is the story of a boy named Max who receives a camcorder for his thirteenth birthday—a device he’ll never part with. Like Charles Aznavour, whose film The look in Charles' eyes has been analyzed here In the film by Loris S. Musumeci and myself, Max films his life, never missing an opportunity to capture—with his camera—moments both important and trivial. Twenty years later, in 2019, Max will unveil the «movie of his life,» watching his life unfold before his eyes—and ours.

In 1989, on the excellent album Sarbacane, Francis Cabrel celebrated the omnipresence of love in our lives and in our minds:

«It's on everyone's mind
Men, angels and vultures
There are no more distances
No one with arms that are too short
Everyone hopes
Even at the far end of the backyards
Everyone wants a return ticket
»Love, love, love, love"

That's not the movie Play by Anthony Marciano, who will challenge this age-old wisdom conveyed by the singer with the Gascon accent. Love is indeed at the heart of this feature film, in which we see the main protagonist, Max (Max Boublil), miss out on the love of his life—through his own fault—and venture into a marriage devoid of true meaning. A mundane, almost boring story. Fortunately, Play is so much more than that. Not only does the screenplay, co-written by Anthony Marciano and Max Boublil, expand on the theme of love to include the fascinating theme of nostalgia for the present, but the form—what a form!—also captivates with its originality and serves the story.

An amateur camera, seriously?

It took some nerve to base this film on the idea of a montage of—so to speak—amateur videos. And it’s the «so to speak» part of my sentence that interests me: short films that are professionally edited and shown publicly are, in reality, anything but amateur. That’s the whole point. What could be described as a «mise en abîme» has the merit of challenging the boundary between the amateur and the professional, and of examining the characteristics that a simple status—that of a film, of a feature-length film—bestows upon a piece of footage.

Also, the semblance of What the hell is this? is perfectly suited to what I would call «shitty lives.» In short, it’s the equivalent in life of what the “extreme center” is in politics. I have no intention here of denigrating this aspect of contemporary societies centered around the middle class; the point is to shed light on what, in all our lives, falls under this “blah-blah” fundamentalism. “That,” Max exclaims at one point while talking to his child about a friend, “is one of Dad’s buddies who has kids, a house in the country, a dog—someone who’s got it all figured out, basically.” This line rings all the truer because the character who says it hasn’t quite figured life out himself. He knows it, so he takes it out on others rather than on himself… at least not yet.

A nostalgia for the present

In fact, Max feels nostalgic for the present. He says so himself: «I’ve always been nostalgic for the present—nostalgic for what I’m experiencing right now.» What does that mean? Quite simply, that the present is elusive. That time—and therefore life itself, which is inscribed within it—is incomprehensible. What is the past, if not something that no longer exists? The future, if not something that is yet to come? And the present—is it anything other than a moment that is already gone the instant we think about it? Let’s live and stop thinking about it—that is the oh-so-simple yet essential remedy offered to us in this film. Live to embrace the love that awaits us. To live to create one’s work, to create one’s existence, to create oneself.

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Photo credit: © Praesens-Film