Cinema Wednesdays - Loris S. Musumeci
«If you go to jail, can I have your room?»
From the light of the sun, to the darkness of a courtroom. June 7, 2016: Lise enjoys beach games, the joys of the sea, under the gaze of a discreet, distant camera. Two gendarmes arrive. The young girl leaves with them. And so begins the turmoil of an adolescent girl. She is suspected of murdering her best friend, Flora, who was found bloodied in her bed that very morning.
For two years now, Lise has been wearing an electronic ankle bracelet. Now it's time for the trial. Faced with a silent, confused, uncooperative girl with controversial morals, what will the court decide? Above all, how will it judge? On what considerations will it base its decision? The Girl with the Bracelet is a hellish jigsaw puzzle, where each piece uncovered causes the viewer increasing anguish and a real desire to know the truth. To finally understand the psychology of a young, possibly murderous eighteen-year-old.
The girl suffocates
The film takes place over several days of the trial. Virtually every scene takes place in the courtroom. With the exception of a few moments in which we witness passages from Lise's daily life. Given the situation, she's been taken out of school, her every move is monitored by the police, her father is on edge, but still wants to support her, and her mother seems to have given up on her. The girl is suffocating. You can't see it, but you understand it. She needs to live, to enjoy, to free herself, but it's getting in the way. Too much pressure.
While the scenes of everyday life in question are useful for trying to penetrate the psychology of the rather hostile and resolutely closed, wounded protagonist, they don't mark a point of success for the film. I'd even go so far as to say they're a failure. This is often the problem with French productions that want to make their scripts and dialogue seem more realistic than they are. It just doesn't work. These scenes have all the makings of a superficial, repetitive and poorly shot TV movie.
Red, red, red
But director Stéphane Demoustier was more tactful with the courtroom scenes. Starting with the choice of location. The courtroom is excellent for the reactions it provokes, the symbolism it brings and the staging it allows. Red, red, red. Everything is red. The whole room is covered in red tiles. From the ceiling to the floor, right down to the benches. Dark red, invaded by tiny holes - long live modern architecture! - that make the place suffocating, to the point of giving you a headache.
And red means passionate love. And red means blood and death. And that's exactly what Lise and Flora's relationship was all about. Two best friends, who also became lovers on nights of pleasure, especially the one before the murder. Two best buddies who fell out over a serious matter of a pornographic video. «I'm going to kill her.» Lise is said to have said this to Flora, after the latter posted a video she filmed of her friend performing oral sex on a classmate, who later became Flora's boyfriend.
In the staging, it's not so much the red that's interesting as the glass that separates the accused from the rest of the room. Lise is alone with her accusation. She faces the judges alone. Of course, she has a lawyer, but a lawyer is never just someone who does his or her job: defending a person accused by the law against the law. When the camera films the young girl behind the window, as if fading in and out, we see her face in the center, surrounded by the reflections of the faces in the room. Faces that are losing hope but still trying to believe, like that of the father; faces eaten away by the acidity of tears and anger, like that of the victim's mother.
Beyond murder
Lise, alone. Faced with accusations that go beyond the mere question of murder. «Why didn't you seem surprised when the two gendarmes were pulled over on the beach?»; «Why did you never show any compassion or sadness for the victim?»; «Do you often perform oral sex on boys who ask you to, while being filmed?»; «Are you what you'd call an easy girl?». From The Girl with the Bracelet, we switch to The Stranger by Albert Camus, where the main character, Meursault, is accused more of not crying at his mother's funeral than of killing a man.
Lise's trial becomes a trial between generations who don't understand each other. A trial for coldness, a trial for libertinism. A trial of friendship. «If you were really friends, why were you sucking the penis of that boy you knew Flora was in love with?» Youth is lost in its own world; justice is also lost in exploring it. Complicated relationships, a bitter mix of kisses and death drives, which tell us only one thing: the truth of the facts is hidden in the secrets of souls. And no one has access to it.
Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com
Photo credit: © Praesens-Film
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