Lausanne and the cinema

 
Dear Frédéric,

I have been asked to write a piece about the cinema in Lausanne... Can you imagine? I ought to be crazy with joy, I who am in love with this town, an undulating lakeside jewel steeped in mystery – and in film. But I cannot even get started, you know, terrorised as I am by the “Lettre à Freddy Buache” by Jean-Luc Godard, which is at one and the same time the finest piece ever written about Lausanne and a prayer for the cinema “which will soon die, too young, without having been able to give its all”. You’ve seen this film, haven’t you, with blue for the lake, grey for the town and green for the forest of Vennes? And you will also remember the drawling voice, saying...

My dear Freddy, I am going to try and talk... talk to you about... this short film about the... about the town of Lausanne. About... still talk about... still try to... not even talk about... I’m talking to you to, er... to guide you, you understand?

It was 27 years ago, I was 12 years old, I never imagined that the cinema might die one day... And even though I sometimes wonder if it will last the summer, a bit like these film theatres in Lausanne that are found dead in autumn, unseen and unknown, I want to believe that it is still alive, that it is breathing in fresh air around the world, that it won’t be finished off so easily, even in Lausanne. Take the film “Garçon stupide” by Lionel Baier, released in 20 American cities, ranked among the ten best films of 2003 by the Los Angeles Times. A story that takes place here, with a local flavour, local colours and a local accent. And that magnificent shot of Bel-Air Tower, appearing in the night to the sound of the Île aux Morts... This film radiates a universal light.

So I’m going to try and talk to you about Lausanne, so you won’t get too lost in this web of perpetual foregrounds and backgrounds produced by ascents and descents. Like in the film by Claude Chabrol “Merci pour le Chocolat”, which stood Lausanne on its head, in three car sequences, which linked the Rue de la Barre to Saint-François, Saint-François to Ouchy and Ouchy to the slopes of the Lavaux, in three shots three movements... He had perfectly understood that this town is a little unreal, tortuous and just a shade perverse, full of nooks and crannies and easily creating an illusion of space. You will see that it is built in a higgledy-piggledy manner, but that is part of its character, this town that has a bit of Genoa and a drop of San Francisco running through its veins (you must of course imagine San Francisco taken down, folded up any old how and then put back together), but the general impression is there.

To find somewhere a bit flat, take a tracking shot along the Rue de l’Ale to Saint-Laurent. Walk quickly and you are in a Dino Risi film; walk slowly and you are in a documentary. Within this area you will certainly cross paths with the directors of CLIMAGE, Mayenfish (“L’Usine”), Fernand Melgar (“Exit”) and Stéphane Goël (“Campagnes perdues”), not to mention Pierre-Yves Borgeaud (“Retour à Gorée”) and Tania Zambrano-Ovalle (“La Vérité vraie”). Film-makers from around here who make films that are exported far and wide, who win prizes in New York, La Rochelle, Brazil, France, and Japan... And if you press on further, if you have the courage to go up the Avenue du Grey, you will come to the building occupied by Gérard Ruey and Jean-Louis Porchet, the famous duo of producers. And beneath the posters of Tanner, Chabrol and Kieslowski, writers whom they have produced or co-produced, you will be able to dream as you watch the aeroplanes take off from La Blécherette.

And then there’s the mother of them all, the Film Archive, which will take you as a son, after the father, Monsieur Buache quite rightly. So, even if the cinema becomes seriously ill, if the Flonplex becomes an “art and experimental” cinema, for example, I know that you will be there to look after the treasures and that Hawks, Ford and Renoir, Mitzoguchi, Lubitsch and Kramer, Italian comedies and westerns will always be in the vaults of Montbenon to heal our wounds and put the world to rights.