Piping
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The incredibly violent documentary by Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, shot at the AP-HP, literally plunges into human bodies.
Plumbing day on the Croisette. While in competition, the elite of world cinema eviscerates, gets butchered or fantasizes regarding a rendering session with Doctor Maboul Cronenberg, the Fortnight draws at the same time the trip to the AP-HP of Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. A whole program for the duo of visual artists and documentarians who ten years ago transformed a trip on a trawler into a hallucinated dive into darkness (Leviathan). Taking the title of a 16th century anatomical treatise, The foreground of the human body is interested in what happens not inside the hospital but inside the patients. To the links that unite the medical profession with failing, shattered bodies, on the verge of extinction.
“Here, we must peel”
In one of the first scenes, a gentleman in his fifties is smiling. He has a sweet face. Placed on the top of his head, a blue sheet separates him from a doctor who is busy screwing something into his skull. A blue meteor crosses the screen. The camera now navigates in a soft, pale pink ocean, an underwater cocoon in which a giant pincer bursts to seize white fibers like we get rid of cobwebs. “Here, we have to peel.” After a br…
