Le Rendez-vous de l'été

This year, the new artistic director of the Berlin International Film Festival, Tricia Tuttle, cancelled the previously acclaimed Encounters unit and replaced it with a new Perspectives unit. The new unit focuses on outstanding new filmmakers, especially those who have fluent and bold film language, compelling viewpoints, and new ways of looking at the world.

French director and actor Valentin Kadic's debut feature film Paris Summer has become a highlight of this unit and the entire Berlin Film Festival this year. It has been repeatedly mentioned and favored in various film reviews of the Berlin Film Festival. In 2020, she co-founded Les Flimeuses, a production company dedicated to supporting female filmmakers. In the same year, she began her directing career.

She collaborated again with Blondie Madyk, the star of her second short film Summer Vacation , and tailored this film between documentary and fiction for her, which is set against the backdrop of the Paris Olympics. The film was shot during the Paris Olympics, with the camera set up in the crowd, but it focused more on the private story of this queer woman. It is also a gentle interrogation of the issues behind the Paris Olympics, deftly piercing the theme park-like fantasy image of enthusiasm, diversity and inclusion that the Paris Olympics strives to present to the world.

Most of the time, our protagonist Blondie cannot really fit in the carnival atmosphere of Paris. The film does not deliberately create any conflicts. We gradually deepen our understanding of Blondie as the film progresses, and learn the purpose of her trip: to watch the swimming competition of her favorite female athlete Beryl Gastaldello and to visit her half-sister Julie whom she has not seen for ten years. We also have a deeper understanding of her failed relationship and her choice not to have children. At the same time, we also experience Hong Sang-soo's embarrassing moments with her. Blondie is pure and introverted, and has a unique sense of pause, which allows her to stumble in various embarrassing situations.

In such an Olympic moment with the most national significance, we can't see any unconscious attachment to nationalism in her. There is no such kitsch in the whole film, which is the freshness and cleverness of this film. She is more like a mirror, reflecting the doubts of the people behind the glamour of Paris who have never been exposed about the high cost of the city image project of managing the Seine River, and the questioning of the legitimacy of the act of expelling homeless people from the streets of Paris.

Blondie continued to accumulate disappointment about this trip, and gradually got lost, until the day before she left Paris, she left sadly under the hysteria of her sister for no reason, and her Paris moment really came. She sat on the back seat of the motorcycle of her new friend, electrician Benjamin, and shuttled through Paris at night, bringing a gust of summer night breeze. The two fell asleep by the river, and when they woke up on the grass, Paris was shrouded in mist before dawn. A miracle happened at this moment. Beryl Gastaldello appeared on a bridge not far away with two dogs. It was a chance morning by the river, not in the Olympic stadium.

When you are just past the age when you can no longer stay in a youth hostel; when you thought that the emotional destination you had in the first half of your life was a stable one, but it turned out to be a passer-by and not a returnee; when you meet your half-sister after a long absence, and you just happen to have the opportunity to meet her at the Olympic Games, then the Paris moment may not be just a simple vacation for the heroine. She is more like a short break from her continuous daily life, a comfort for the long-term emotional investment in the blank, and an atmosphere that can fill the heart with the noisy and festive atmosphere and drive away loneliness. The heroine looks ordinary and impressive. She is super stable at heart and never shouts at all in the face of embarrassment and various predicaments. She can sensitively capture the other person's emotions and never cause trouble to others. Like an elf, she comes and goes freely. She always thinks more and says less, and treats her own sadness. In the process of her communication with her niece, I only remember that she was calm as if she was telling someone else's story. The sun was bright, the plants were lush, and the past woven by light and shadow was like broken gold, reflecting the heroine's inner true expression of herself and life.

Of the people the heroine came into contact with in Paris, my favorite part was the part where she confronted the police, and the conversation by the lake after she and the electrician spent their last night together on a motorcycle in Paris. The views on political current affairs can actually be expressed so naturally and with personal characteristics; by the lake, the heroine expressed her apology in a lukewarm manner, and her previous intimate behavior by the swimming pool did not mean that she wanted to restart her plan to share her life with others.

The whole movie is full of moving summer scenes. Behind the stretching vitality is the heroine's full emotional perception ability and self-consistent expression after super clear self-awareness. We can follow the heroine's pace, dance to the rhythm of time in the ever-changing torrent of changes in the times, or eat a crepe after the show to cheer up. Don't be afraid of missing an important performance, because she/he may be crossing the street at the next street corner where you go out to see.

#2025BJIFF 4.5 stars. It feels quite lifelike. It's easy to watch and it touches me. I don't think it's short, but I hope the story can be told more (so I still feel something is missing). It's completely in line with expectations. I feel refreshed and comfortable after watching it. It would be great if I could see this kind of movie often in the cinema. By the way, is this movie going to be imported? It has been thoughtfully added with embedded Chinese subtitles, which is good. The protagonist Branding is the kind of person who seems to be unhurt by others no matter what. She has her own needs, but when others make requests, she will still prioritize the needs of others (?). Looking at the singing and dancing crowd, she will not take out her mobile phone to record and film, she just stands aside and watches silently with a smile. Maybe this is i-person (?). It's also interesting to set the overall environment in the Paris Olympics. A seemingly absolutely "good" event brings different feelings to everyone. Outside the camera, how many lives have never been paid attention to. But this is life in this society. Zooming in and out, we can see completely different things. I personally like swimming, and I have also participated in the Beijing Winter Olympics as a volunteer, so this film touched me even more. Behind a grand event, there are actually many inconspicuous people doing essential work, but this work is actually not that rigorous, after all, this world is just a huge grass-roots team. It is really a wonderful thing to think that in such a torrent, everyone's inner storms are different. The character of Julie is also quite distinctive. She can tell you very considerately, "You don't have to help me take care of the children", or she can say like a caring elder sister, "Mysterious Blanding, others don't know what you are thinking in your heart", or she can suddenly get angry and say, "Why do you all mess up my life?" She is really a person of temperament, and the contrast with Julie is so sharp. The French seem to be quite casual about life and feelings. It is also amazing to find a riverside to sleep for a night. Brandin seems to still be obsessed with her ex-girlfriend, but she seems to be in a dilemma: she loves her, but because her life alone is very self-sufficient, she cannot tolerate another person (?). I found that I am a bit like Brandin, and I am going off topic.

When ordinary people become the protagonist #After watching the movie Paris Holiday, I always want to write something. It has been a long time since I have encountered such a book-like movie - it is not deliberately sensational, but it inadvertently reveals the poetry of life, which is real, beautiful, and even a little humorous. Those seemingly trivial daily fragments, like pages of a book, are turned one by one, as real as wearing suspenders and basking in the sun on the lawn in Paris. I especially like the casting of the movie, timid, gentle, and somewhat inconspicuous Blandine. As the line in the movie said: "In order to welcome the camera, they expelled those who no one paid attention to." This character made me dazed several times - the contradictory feeling of both transparency and mystery in her is very similar to us who walk alone in the corner of the city, like a transparent and opaque stone bracelet. When she woke up by the Seine in the early morning and faced the athletes she was looking forward to seeing, the ordinary glimmer was particularly moving. This is a movie suitable for watching alone. In fact, whether it is traveling or watching movies, what is important is never whether you are happy or not, but how those unrepeatable moments leave marks in our lives. Because I was busy with homework and lacked sleep, I didn't want to go to Chaoyang District to watch it. However, I couldn't help crying and applauding when the movie ended. The feeling of being alive has never been so real. In fact, the narrative of a daily account is not necessarily bad. In this era where everything is over-embellished, we need to find the power of reality in such plain narratives.

"Paris Summer" is a short film shot during the Paris Olympics. It is as refreshing and healing as orange soda.

Blandine is from the seaside town of Normandy. She came to the Paris Olympics to watch the swimming competition, but was refused entry because her backpack was too big; on the second day after she checked into the youth hostel, she was told that she was over the age limit (only 18-30 years old were accepted) and asked to move out; when she went to her sister Julie's house, she was either asked to help take care of the baby or yelled at by her sister; she was caught by the police when she was handing over the baby to her ex-brother-in-law on the street, and they mistook her for an anti-Olympic activist. Although the police may have had a headache in the end, they simply let her go because they couldn't argue with Blandine any more... Walking on the noisy streets of Paris, Blandine hid herself as if to please others, and walked with slow, Buddhist and slightly numb steps.

But the vacation is only five days, and Blandine will eventually leave. Riding on the electrician's purple and green motorcycle, the two marginalized people sped on the road and came to the river to enjoy the quiet night that was not so Parisian. Blandine and the electrician bravely expressed their true thoughts, and also met her idol swimmer at the blues moment fatefully - although not in the stadium. Her summer in Paris is over. Blandine played her favorite songs at the station and nodded shyly in the unfamiliar applause. At this moment, she completely found herself and really began to enjoy Paris.

I saw myself in Brandin, ordinary, timid, kind and sincere, living in her own rhythm. But if you keep walking, luck will always favor you, just like Paris, which walks fast and talks fast, will give this slow kid a touch of gentleness and fulfill her wish. Orange soda in summer, the bubbles burst gently, refreshing.