The world as we know it collapses.
The growing inequality of wealth, a collapsed climate and the continuous expansion of uncontrolled violence in the state bear us all. It is far from being a joyful situation, but it is in this heavy but inevitable reality where the filmmaker Félix Dufour-Laperraire places us in “Death does not exist”. Thus, this is where any commitment with his work must also start.
Despite its title, it is an impressionist film on the way death exists and will haunt us after the moment of loss. Although it does not make its subtext 100% explicit, it is based on clearly modern anxieties on the way in which the world has become unbalanced. Presented with a simple but frequently amazing animation which can look like a children’s book with a nightmarish tone, it is a fable that pushes us to look death in the eyes while clinging to what we appreciate in life. Although her film is difficult to pin completely, Dufour-Laperrière is interested in what is happening when you risk everything to change the world, only to discover that the cost is that you can lose everything accordingly.
Thursday in the sidebar of the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, “Death Di not Exist” begins with a group of activists who are about to attack a closed mansion and its rich residents. Potential attackers seem nervous and frightened by what will happen, but continue nevertheless.
Some doubtful exchanges are used to sketch their state of mind, then the world of attackers separates while their lives ends with an exchange of gunshots punctuated by shards not of red blood, but a more disturbing and unexpected yellow. It is like a painting or a rendering of violence, although it is very real for the members of the group.
When one of the activists, Hélène, leaves the others and withdrew into the desert, she is chased by another member of the party, Manon, who offers her a chance to return to fight rather than flee.
Although the film becomes more and more about this unique choice, “death does not exist” is never a note. It bursts with layers of complex emotion and visceral and vibrant visuals. Dufour-Laperrière does not hesitate to capture horrible violence, using a changing color palette to make destruction even more haunting.
“Are you lost?” A young girl asks Hélène as she wanders in the desert, the question referring not only to a feeling of topographic uncertainty but also to an emotional question. The film feels increasingly unrelated when it comes back and in front of the opening shootout, using this framing to request the cost of a movement that uses violence. Can you save those you love, or will it require losing them entirely? How will your existence be reshaped when you make this jump?
Curiously, “death does not exist” condemns neither explicitly nor approves a path. He never speaks to viewers or does not judge as much as it sank into deeper and often surreal reflections on the way we continue when everything is torn.
This is felt when Hélène arrives on a sheep torn by coyotes before he was resurrected. We see every detail and hear each crunch while life turns to death, then comes back. The animation here is macabre but always magnificent, taking on a fascinating quality as we see the choice that Hélène, as well as all, must make.
In each beautifully animated setting, the film shows painfully clearly that there is no avoidance of this reality. Although the film can always feel as if he loses part of his resonance by not completely presenting the specific motivations of the group, we feel the urgency of the crisis in Hélène. No matter how much we can want to move away from imminent destruction, there is no retirement in the desert for us.
Although “death does not exist” is a fairly short characteristic, operating only 72 minutes, it is a film of big ideas and vast existential questions. Even when the presentation is simple, it has a silently poetic power. It is melancholy, often fascinating and, ultimately, evolving in the way he asks us to think about the painful choice in front of the world.
The fact that he finally returns to the place where he began to guide us through the incident of incentive again only makes him much more effective because he opens the painful injury in his heart. Dufour-Laperrière ultimately does not offer easy answers, rather plunging us into reality than there is. In an evisible closing table, he finds a truthful and honest beauty in our ruined world.
