In the past, the peddler passed through the villages every year, offering buttons, ribbons and books to the inhabitants of remote areas. Independent filmmaker, Daniel Duqué perpetuates the tradition: he knocks on the door of Valais houses to sell DVDs of his films, which are more contemplative than dramatic (Through the branches of a tree, Last petals of a daisy…), and engages in dialogue with those who open their doors to him. He also films them.
Erratic documentary furiously auteurist, Peddling prohibited claims to be Godard, Debord, Deleuze and Saint-Exupéry, but evokes more a flappy chapter of Pass me the binoculars what JLG/JLG. December self-portrait. The director rides a scooter on the fine line separating the creative gesture from opportunism. His interlocutors, all good people if not philosophers, emit sentences like “we must listen to people rather than judge them”, without forgetting strong thoughts on the famous child’s soul, so devalued by the times that run… The turbid flow of the clichés nevertheless conceals some poetic nuggets. And in the name of humanity, we feel tenderness for those arrested. The image peddler also indulges in an amusing sociology of the doormat and does not omit the famous couplet on the death of cinema.
In order to reverse the hierarchy of relationships between the one who questions and the one who answers, Daniel Duqué puts his camera in the hands of a neophyte. She records a few random shots, comments on them: “It’s not folichon, folichon, but…” It’s an hook that suits Peddling prohibited.
Peddling prohibited, by Daniel Duqué (Switzerland, 2022), 1h18.
