Competition: “Frontier of Dawn” by Philippe Garrel

The second of the three French features in Competition, Frontier of Dawn by Philippe Garrel, screens today. The French director has long been a familiar presence at the Festival, having premiered several of his films here. Marie pour mémoire (“Marie for Memory”) screened in a parallel section in 1968, as did Le Lit de la Vierge in 1969, Le Révélateur in 1970, Le Berceau de Cristal in 1976, Liberté la Nuit in 1984, Paris Vu Par 20 ans après (a collaborative film) the same year, and Elle a Passé Tant d’Heures sous les Sunlights in 1985. Cannes Classics featured La Cicatrice Intérieure (“The Inner Scar”) in 2004. This year, Garrel is presenting a love story, filmed in black-and-white, about an affair between a movie star neglected by her husband, played by Laura Smet, and a young photographer who has come to shoot a story about her, played by Louis Garrel, the director’s son.

Philippe Garrel explains his title choice: “While I was writing it, the film was called Heaven of the Angels, an expression I found in “Blanche ou l’Oubli,” a novel by Louis Aragon. I liked it a lot, but I was put off by the neo-Catholic side. And one night, at four in the morning, I came up with Frontier of Dawn, which evoked both the suicide and the ghost themes. I made the film with this title in mind and it gave me the key to each scene. Maybe the title is too deliberately poetic. I know the director, Pierre Romans, who said an actor must never act poetic, and to be poetic, you have to act in a realistic manner, with a trivial element. I agreed with him and ever since, I’ve been thinking that way about everything, including the way I compose shots. Poetry in cinema can only exist unconsciously. It comes out if the film has a soul.”