[Juste Amis] A study on the Short Film

by Dontrell Lovet't

from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]

Too many films have adopted the notion of an illegitimate plot, a thing if distorted enough, the audience will not see, and if they do not see, they do not question, rather become obliged to follow, praise and dignify. Man, as a film, must first fall to know that it can stand upright; and this fall, cannot afford to come in the release of it to the public, the fall must come in the mind of the film
maker before they commit to a more drastic fault when their work meets cinema. These vital mistakes are committed and not only committed but committed to; If one is enable to escape the consequence of their crimes, then the criminal will then commit to more mayhem, he will feel God-like inasmuch he is the sole exception of all humanity that has no ill-relationship with punishment.

Despite how much planning goes into life, Murphy's Law pertains to every facade of this life. Whatever is made by man is made in the image of man and thus imperfect, flawed and contemptuous. Life is about perpetual movement, we all have to figure that out sometime, and it isn't always pleasant. But without movement, everything that is myopic is the only thing that will be found. Film, as humanity, must move forward to its destination; art has more than one fate inasmuch it lives on far past the point we all return to dust. But from plans, from all we try to gain in preparation, spontaneity can also provide a function in which to find success. The 2007 French short film "Juste Amis" (Just Friends) starring Armelle Lecoeur was shot in a matter of five hours. The director, his camera and a few actors, no script, no crew, all flutter of experimental. Lecoeur, portraying a Parisianne woman on her way home who encounters a man in the window of a nearby hotel. She is starstruck and amazed to see him, Bastien, a childhood romance that stained upon her memory and immediately caused the yearn of reconcilement. Invigorated and flustered, she hides in the doorway of a building, smokes a cigarette and calls her friend Elsa, who is in a cab headed for her location. Once Elsa arrives, she rants to her, attempting to convince Elsa to go to the hotel to find out if he's married, how many kids do he have, how long have he been staying at the hotel and if he has been thinking about her. Elsa, in a look of confusion, believes her friend has lost it but out of friendship, she goes to the hotel, checks and returns to tell Lecoeur that Bastien wasn't there, kisses her and leaves. During the duration of her frantic breakdown, her boyfriend has been calling looking for her and once she answered the phone, she finds out that her friend Elsa has called and told him about Bastien. She panics. She attempts to calm her boyfriend who has been trying to reach her for 2 hours that Bastien is just a childhood friend. He doesn't buy it, tells her to come home or he will kill her and hangs up. She calls Elsa, frantic once again in a terror disgusted of her betrayal, warning her that she will be thrown out on the streets or killed by her boyfriend. Elsa attempts to calm Lecoeur but to no avail; she is torn in between her childhood lover Bastien, her murderous boyfriend awaiting her at home and the betrayal at the hands of her friend. In under 12 minutes, there is an unfolding of dramatic fevor, destructive humor, frantic wit in a romantic language in a minute fraction of a romantic city. Spontaneity in this light has a corrosive intent; that 12 minutes can capture, captivate and hold captive an audience in a way that most major films cannot. There is only a splinter of time that a short film has to open, progress to the climax, recruit the audience to its cause, and take them down into a mad murder-suicidal plummet.

The short film must surpass the ordinary limits of this life, flagellate itself as a flagellate at the base of life for the fracture that has become the major motion film. Nothing can diminish the authenticity a poetic sense of a profound, original idea- originality declares itself as a glow amongst the inane. It is in the very unwritten, unscripted murmur of material as "Juste Amis" that we see the significance that unravels when timing and authenticity collides and becomes an immortal compound.