A film by Benoît Labourdette
Vanitas
As if life was a dream...
One by one,
you have shot down the doors
of life with me.
The wall,
the large back wall,
black,
across which you often used to go,
full of openings,
so then became
darker and darker,
as you were closing up it's openings,
with your light black dress,
you moved around
from the bright side where I lived,
to the dark side,
past,
seduction,
regrets.
Despite that wall increasingly dark between us,
since there were still little openings,
we passing by it,
to meet each other
on one side or the other one,
to share.
But
over time,
after all,
you kept on,
on various
occasions,
locking up,
doors,
windows,
and any other openings.
Eventualy, only one door remained,
with a heavy lock.
With a key,
a single use key,
as it is
so rusty
and black.
One day,
you slammed at my face,
that final door.
You has been seduced
by sparkles in the darkness,
promises of success,
vanity,
morgue,
the power of diabolical
impossible promises.
Like a return to the rassuring
mother,
even if we know we can't go back inside our mother anymore.
Seduced by the poisonous
words of a distant
man
and of a sick
mother.
Both so attractive.
The terribly dark and reassuring
power of death,
much more attractive than the fragility of life,
for which we have to work.
This masked death
that promises an eternal
strong, powerful existance
so much more attractive
than our fragile life.
And now, there you are,
confined on the other side,
the black side.
We can't see you, anymore.
Panic took possession of you,
because you can see,
despite the perpetual grins
tempters and temptresses bear on their masks,
you were not free nor alive
when they attracted you
You were in the burning Hell
prison of regrets,
of passed misfortune
of all the dead with restless suffering.
You turn back where you came from
but indeed, you have
solded every door,
with your blood,
over the last months.
You wish you could open them again and go back to your life,
wich makes laugh your executioners
laugh in a terrible sound
of scratchy voices.
The wall is a burning metal plate,
with rusted doors having
been incrementally closed for ever.
Almost blood left in your veins.
The ground seems to fall away beneath your feet.
The characters,
so appealing
before the door closed up for ever,
had lost in an instant
the reflection
that illuminated their eyes with sparkles.
And now, they are there,
in front of you, in truth.
The hollow eyes,
nonexistant,
because they are dead,
which were, one day,
making that choise of shadow, like you,
and since
they must feed by beings
they succeed to seduce.
Yes,
some kind of vampires.
You can become like them,
burned by an insatiable inner fire,
devastated by suffering, quench your thirst
until the human drained.
You see them all around you,
mother, cousins, lovers, childhood friends...
Finally, you see their true colors.
Finally you see they've fed of yourself,
and now
they receive you in their confraternity.
Will you be like them,
imprisoned in the eternal regrets
or,
no longer believes in,
will you attemp, scratching your hands,
throwing
the latest drops of your blood that remains,
to reopen one of the first doors that you had closed,
maybe not as well as the others,
to try to come back to life,
where it rains now?
To do that,
you should
forget vanity
ego,
pride,
fantasy of greatness.
You should be, plainly.
And maybe, if you'll succeed
to move your body on the other side,
the rain
would wash up your dress,
that would become white.
But it happens
that the rain can't change anything,
because vanity is too strong,
and then, despite this breakthrough,
some dive back behind the wall.
text, voice, direction Benoît Labourdette
with Bénédicte Loyen
music : Ludwig Van Beethoven Performed in 1973 by Ignaz Friedman
filmed at the Chapelle des jésuites, Chaumont during the exhibition "Posture(s)", 2016
Thanks to
subtitles : Leny Müh