TV: "A radiant Sky", a Tale of reincarnation

Telefilm on Arte at 8 pm 55Le first long fixed plane of a radiant sky says opposite of what title suggests. In a hospital hallway, sitting a few metres away, a couple and a woman accompanied by her little girl are waiting for news of ir son and husband, victims in night of a road accident, respectively. The first, Leo, a young high school student, is in a coma, second, Vincent, has only a few minutes to live.

A month has passed, Leo wakes up and doesn't understand. He is not Leo. His parents are strangers. His character is not one evoked in front of him – a sympatic but incorrigible hoad – but rar a man of concern and damage. And n images that come back to him are those of a husband and a loving but absent far, overwrought by hours of work which he thinks will save him from a plan of dismissal. Leo is forced to go to obvious: in this body envelope which is his now lives Vincent.

A fragility that nourishes poetry

Adapted from graphic novel by Jirô Taniguchi, film by Nicolas Boukhrief portrays reincarnation as a simple affair, a banal story that surprises us never to doubt – thanks to restraint of dialogue and interpretation of high flight that Delivers young actor Léo Legrand – but whose strange character is signalled to us by disposed, offbeat aestic parties. The filmmaker who was able to take advantage of space of freedom offered to him by universe stripped of manga to register his own signature, to play alternation of close-ups and plans-sequences, dives and counter dives, tight frames and Depths of field.

A radiant sky holds on this thread – a realistic treatment of history and strangeness of form –, in fragile equilibrium, a fragility capable of nourishing poetry, delicacy and melancholy of a subject that leads to reflection on death, mourning, belief. Nicolas Boukhrief has a modesty. He transmits it to his film, having air of not touching it even when it comes to rigor of every moment (direction of actors, axes camera, montage). Paradoxically, this posture which offers a seat to film also allows it to rise to this form of spirituality to which it claims. Without imposing it or weighing it.

A radiant sky, by Nicolas Boukhrief. With Léo Legrand, Dimitri Storoge, Armande Boulanger (France, 2017, 96 min).