Gaubert

This film marks the directorial debut of Robert Benayoun. An artist (Richard Leduc) attending a party smokes some dope and develops the ability to see into the future and the past. He returns to his apartment where he sees the vision of a woman who had lived there 30 years ago. A friend tries to convince him it is his heightened sensitively as an artist that allows for the newfound abilities, but he soon has psychedelic hallucinations and his abilities increase with time. Stop-motion photography is effectively used in his sequence of visual experiences where the people exist but not the city in this metaphysical story.

Released in France as La Kermesse Heroique, Carnival in Flanders is set during the long-ago war between the Dutch and Spanish. A tiny village in Flanders is invaded by Spanish troops. The townsfolk have heard of Spanish cruelties in other towns, and decide to deflect the vanquishers by playing dead. This isn't terribly effective (you have to take a breath once in a while), so the wife of the burgomaster tries to soften up the invaders with a lavish carnival. So successful is this venture that the Spaniards allow the village to escape being decimated, or even taxed. An award-winner many times over, Carnival in Flanders was banned in Germany; evidently, Goebbels caught on that director Jacques Feyder and scenarists Bernard Zimmer and Charles Spaak were drawing deliberate parallels between the Spanish and the then-burgeoning Nazis.

Welcome to a world ravaged by explosions of violence, a world without love. Jung, the broken-hearted hero, pursues his quest reunite with Maria, his lost love, savagely decapitated by Little Jesus. He can count on the support of allies met along his bloody path, encounters that provide an understanding of others, but especially of himself. He also has to deal with his “violent outbreaks,” an incontrollable curse that springs from his murderous soul.