QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM VENICE

Italian director Alice Rohrwacher (of last year’s deeply allegorical La Chimera and filthy genius, poetic Happy as Lazzaro, from five years earlier) join forces with French street JR in order to craft a 21-minute film bursting with artistic and visual trickery. This isn’t the first time that the Frenchman (whose work is often compared to Banksy’s) experiments with film. Six years ago he co-directed the equally brilliant Faces Places (alongside the late Agnes Varda).

The story is very simple: a young Parisian mother (Lyna Khoudri) is late for her ballet rehearsal. She even forgot her tutu. She blames it on her little son Jay (Naïm El Kaldaoui), who she brings along to the theatre, arguing that his sickness caused her delay. She insists that he coughs, and the organisers grudgingly allow her to take part in the proceedings. In reality, the little boy looks very healthy. They were delayed by his cardboard kaleidoscope, which collapsed as they rushed through the streets of the French capital. He is very disappointed, but his mum promises that she’s rebuild the toy for him in a much more exciting format. The theatre director (Leos Carax) has a surprise in store for both of them.

This cryptic short film borrows from Plato’s In The Allegory of the Cave. The ancient Greek philosopher questioned: what would happen if prisoners were set free from their chains and escape the cave? JR attempts to answer this question with his giant urban interventions, blending large-scale print, illusions and – on this occasion – abundant CGI. The building is magically converted into a gate/cave leading to a different dimension. The young boy literally peels off the layer of the external (which ionically reads “prohibited sticking posters”) in order to reveal that it is the facade that’s barely real. He then immerses himself into a colourful, fantastic world of graffiti. A beautiful ballet of the tactile and the imaginary Takes place. Ultimately, the urban environment and the entire ballet troupe get sucked into this deliciously deceitful universe. Minimalistic tub-thumping sounds create a sense distance and suspense.

The story wraps up with a claim, presumably of JR’s authorship: “Perhaps it’s not enough to say that the images are illusions because the chains are real”. It feels liberating. I immediately wanted to break the shackles that bound me to my seat and rip the the film screen to pieces, in the hope that a hallucinatory and chimeric version of JR and Alice would materialise behind it. This is one of this brief and audacious film experiments capable of expanding the possibilities of film, while also highlighting its intersection with other art forms.

An Urban Allegory just premiered in the 81st Venice International Film Festival, in a special screening. Hypnotic, mesmerising and simply unmissable.