‘Petit matin’, de Christophe Loizillon, en la Sección Oficial de La Cabina 2013

At dawn, during those calm hours when everyone is still sleeping, a man picks some flowers from his garden, preparing a beautiful bouquet with a pink dahlia in the center. When he returns home, his wife has passed away. This is the beginning of the silent and tender Petit Matin, by French director Christophe Loizillon.

With no ornamentation to take away from the naturalness of the scenes, the story line is divided in small chapters where the audience is shown how the loss of a loved one affects the life of the main characters. The camera adopts a subjective point of view and follows the characters throughout the movie.

Loizillon wants to remind the audience that death is a daily event, it comes with no warning, at dawn, when everything is starting anew, and the world is still turning. However, something does stop in the lives of Léon, Alice, Wallace and the big pink dahlia.

This half-length film hides a pleasant surprise; Lèon, the old man with the bouquet, is actor Philippe Laudenbach, one of the most recognized personalities of French film. Laudenbach worked with Truffaut in Vivement Dimanche (1983) and Resnais in Mon oncle d’Amérique (1980). In 2010 he played the role of Célestin in Of Gods and Men, by Xavier Beauvois. Besides Laudenbach, this small film counts with French actor and director Mathieu Amalric; he has participated in numerous French films and has also worked with Spielberg in Munich; he was widely acclaimed by critics and audience alike for his role in Julian Schnabel’s The diving bell and the butterfly, for which he was awarded a César Prize as Best Actor in 2008.

Christophe Loizillon started his career as a film director in the mid-80s and has also worked as a producer, screenwriter and actor. His first feature film, Le silence de Rak, was released in 1996. Besides Les mains, ha has directed short-fils Les pieds and Les visages, which can be seen in his Vimeo channel.

Petit matin is part of the Offical Section of the 6th edition of the International Half-Length Film Festival La Cabina, that will be celebrated from the 7th to the 18th of November in Valencia.

PETIT MATIN | Christophe Loizillon · France · 2012 · 34 min