Like Johan Van Der Keuken in The Blind Child, Nicolas Philibert films children deprived of a fundamental sense, learning patiently. Here he does not try to recreate or make us feel the experience of deafness. What interests him is the way in which, from this absence, they invent a singular, communicative language, with the help of their teachers, all of their own.
A child clears his throat. He follows the instructions of his speech therapist, the vibration of the throat and the pressure of the finger on the epiglottis replace the sound. Once the objective has been reached, the pupil diverts the experience by producing, for his own pleasure, rumbling sounds. In a few seconds this exercise is transformed into a game.
Throughout the sequence, the director films the inventiveness, the singular and choreographic character of the gestures of sign language. He chooses fixed, precise frames at the height of the children. He cannot be in front of them, in the teacher's place, nor behind them, or too far away. Florent, with his headphones on, has to repeat what the speech therapist tells him into a microphone. Even more than gestures or touch, which are important in the first exercise, here it is sight - the gaze - which is at the centre of the learning process. At the beginning, we can clearly hear the teacher calling him by his first name, but he seems to have doubts, he blinks. The camera shifts slightly to show the teacher in the foreground, encouraging him again and again: until the end of the sequence, the boy does not take his eyes off her and they seem to be linked by an invisible thread, inventing their own codes to move forward together, as if balancing on a knife's edge. It is difficult for the director to interrupt these moments, just as he excludes the world out of shot that could break the tension and intensity of their joint progression, until the end of the exercise, which then feels like a small victory for Florent.
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Like Johan Van Der Keuken in The Blind Child, Nicolas Philibert films children deprived of a fundamental sense, learning patiently. Here he does not try to recreate or make us feel the experience of deafness. What interests him is the way in which, from this absence, they invent a singular, communicative language, with the help of their teachers, all of their own.
A child clears his throat. He follows the instructions of his speech therapist, the vibration of the throat and the pressure of the finger on the epiglottis replace the sound. Once the objective has been reached, the pupil diverts the experience by producing, for his own pleasure, rumbling sounds. In a few seconds this exercise is transformed into a game.
Throughout the sequence, the director films the inventiveness, the singular and choreographic character of the gestures of sign language. He chooses fixed, precise frames at the height of the children. He cannot be in front of them, in the teacher's place, nor behind them, or too far away. Florent, with his headphones on, has to repeat what the speech therapist tells him into a microphone. Even more than gestures or touch, which are important in the first exercise, here it is sight - the gaze - which is at the centre of the learning process. At the beginning, we can clearly hear the teacher calling him by his first name, but he seems to have doubts, he blinks. The camera shifts slightly to show the teacher in the foreground, encouraging him again and again: until the end of the sequence, the boy does not take his eyes off her and they seem to be linked by an invisible thread, inventing their own codes to move forward together, as if balancing on a knife's edge. It is difficult for the director to interrupt these moments, just as he excludes the world out of shot that could break the tension and intensity of their joint progression, until the end of the exercise, which then feels like a small victory for Florent.