Between comedy and tragedy – The films of Noémie Lvovsky

Noémie Lvovsky (*1964) has made a name for herself as a director, screenwriter and actress. Multi-talented, she has been a defining figure of contemporary French cinema for 30 years - writing scripts for her own films as well as those of others (including Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Arnaud Desplechin and Philippe Garrel), performing in supporting roles (with Bertrand Bonello and Alain Guiraudie for example) and, last but not least, directing herself. With the mark of an auteur, she makes popular cinema that cannot be categorized only as serious or as entertaining. Her films oscillate between comedy and tragedy, bearing a certain proximity to the boulevard and the theater – performances are explicit. Naturalism is not Lvovsky's thing, as underscored by the use of hyperreality and intense colors in costumes and décor. Thanks to the director's assured sense of tragicomic effects and masterful changes of tone and mood, Lvovsky's films are at once joyful and melancholy, comic and tragic, silly and subtle, playful and thoughtful. Music is very important in the entire oeuvre of the director who often orchestrates high-spirited dance scenes. Equally recurring motifs are an interest in the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and the family, particularly mother-daughter relationships. Lvovsky succeeds impressively in exploring the depths of women's and girls' experiences. The personal, not to say autobiographical, touch of her films is evident but not ostentatious.

As part of the French Film Week, which is presenting the Berlin premiere of Lvovsky's most recent film La Grande Magie (The Great Magic),  Arsenal is showing a program of the director's earlier works, from her brilliant debut OUBLIE-MOI (Forget Me, F 1994), that emerged from her screenwriting studies at the Paris film school La Fémis to her personal DEMAIN ET TOUS LES AUTRES JOURS (Tomorrow and Thereafter, F 2017), where she, like for CAMILLE REDOUBLE (Camille Rewinds, F 2012), was director, co-author and main actor. Noémie Lvovsky will be Arsenal's guest on 26.11.. (Birgit Kohler)

With the support of the Institut français.