Out of the Blue: Remembrance of Dresses Past

The only memory I keep from kindergarten is from Carnival day. We were all gathered at the playground, waiting for our pictures to be taken. A girl came toward me and, out of the blue, slapped me in the face. I remember her name: Natalia. I remember her princess costume: a silky dress in royal blue and dark turquoise. And, of course, I remember her brutal slap—and not just for its violence (that still stings) but, above all, for its arbitrariness (which hurts even deeper)...

The Sadness Will Last Forever: ‘À nos amours’ (Maurice Pialat, 1983)

Before becoming a director, Maurice Pialat had been a painter. In his youth, he adored Van Gogh. Later in life, he spent years imagining a project about the last months of the Dutch painter, culminating in his 1991 film, Van Gogh. Despite all this, in a 1992 interview, Pialat remarked: "Van Gogh was quite unlike me". Quite unlike him, but not so unlike him as to not cling onto his last words and hurl them against the people seated at this dinner table – his family in the fiction, but also his film family, his group of collaborators...