Mountain Pass

A first try, a stroke of genius. For his first feature film, Jean-François Stévenin, actor, but also an assistant well acquainted with film sets, invents a magic formula. While he may claim his admiration of hysteria as shown by John Cassavetes and the dryness of Monte Hellman, he suddenly introduces a new approach. At every decisionmaking point of filmmaking, Stévenin chooses to destroy all established codes and spectacularly break all the rules: cast, editing, sound, etc. Everything here is surprising, as if it were a permanent evasion: from slow editing, from real sound, from narrative continuity… in short, all obvious actions and routines. The screenplay? Two men on a mountain, a shady mechanic (Stévenin himself) and a Parisian architect (the magnificent Villeret) who have nothing in common, establish a friendship, quite coincidentally and without saying so. And it is those silences, these stammered dialogues, all that remains unsaid that allows the film to follow this friendship, troubling as it may be. (Viennale)