Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi directs with almond trees a fresco both autobiographical and period, retracing in an intimate way a collective adventure, that of the theater school of Amandiers de Nanterre, founded by Pierre Romans and Patrice Chéreau. And perfectly restores this short period of changeover during which, because it has become impossible for young people to live in a totally unconscious way, vulnerabilities are poignant. This moving crossroads of destinies deserves, beyond the controversies, that we dwell on it.
There are several degrees of reading in almond trees, a beautiful choral film which allows Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi to reconcile the frenzy of its rhythm and the retreat of its reflection, like a look in the rear view mirror. This passion for speed, incandescence, sensation is quite rightly transcribed, in all its aspects, this ordeal which reached its tragic climax with the outbreak of AIDS and overdoses. And we will be grateful to the director, despite certain clumsiness when she is in certain moments of useless hyperbole, for keeping an adequate tone, for avoiding all the morbid romanticism that might so easily have been associated with it. This measurement, this topicality of the game, this recreation of a certain spirit, are only permitted because it has lived, in this place, this particular adventure. And its actors, confusing with vitality, are in tune with this veracity.
The film obviously constitutes a beautiful reflection on the theatre, on the necessity and the danger of the stripping bare that it imposes, and therefore on the necessary limit to be installed. On stage of course, but also in life. And, in the film, the singular absence of an “official” limit is obvious. Within this troop, everything circulates and mixes, bodies, products, social positions, secrets which, because they are no longer secrets, reinforce their harmful power. The camera gives pride of place to prying eyes, to unconscious or assumed transgressions, to diverted dominations, under cover of lightness and innocence. She also shows how a word can hurt, a humiliation can kill the possible benefit of shame, this emotion which, as the young Adèle says at the start of the film, is necessary for the actor since it is proof that, by his game, he revealed himself.
Recent news surrounding the film – one of the main actors is accused of multiple rapes while investigations suggest that a omerta on the subject would have surrounded the filming – paradoxically sheds an even fairer light, although very raw, on its message, in any case in a rather abysmal unconscious dimension. It brings face to face two youths both profoundly similar and radically different. Two periods that collide. Psychopathology and behaviors persist, especially in their excesses, but the gradual disappearance of social limits allowed by the rise of the values of individuality and freedom – those that the film symbolizes well – seems to have resulted in the need to replace them. others, necessarily outside an institutional field that is fundamentally called into question today. It is this clumsy attempt to establish limits resulting from a certain loss of innocence, or rather of naivety, which leads to the successive explosions that shake every environment, and particularly that of the arts. And the fact that Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, whose quality of transmission is quite exceptional, finds herself in the position where she is today, has something striking that says a lot regarding our change of era – and the persistence ghosts that haunt our lives…