"Alix's Pictures" ( Jean Eustache, 1982 )

"Alix's Pictures" ( "Les photos d'Alix", 1982 )
Director: Jean Eustache

Winner of the 1982 Cesar Award for Best Short Film, Les Photos d'Alix is Jean Eustache's playful meditation on the ambiguity of images and the elusiveness of interpretation. In a room a young woman (Alix Cléo-Roubaud) describes to a young man (Boris Eustache, the director's son) the stories, techniques, and meanings behind several of her meticulously composed black-and-white photographs. But at some point her explanations don't seem to match what we see. Is this because language can never accurately account for the visual? Because the viewer is being asked to perform more than a surface-level comprehension of art? Because Eustache is perpetrating some sort of absurdist practical joke? Or all of the above?

https://www.janusfilms.com/films/2130
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081336/

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