Critique de Magrol (ALLO CINE)
Un des films les plus justes et les plus fascinants qui aient jamais été tournés sur la question de la psychose. À partir d’un roman écrit par lui-même, Alain Jessua retrace l’itinéraire inéluctable d’un homme dans le déclenchement de sa folie.

Charles Denner incarne de façon fabuleuse ce personnage hanté par les formes au point de se fondre peu à peu en elles au point de perdre toute notion de l’altérité. Le passage, si progressif qu’il en est imperceptible, du monde « normal » à celui où Jacques Vallin se réfugie de plus en plus, est rendu parfaitement au niveau cinématographique par une variation vertigineuse sur les sons, les formes et les lumières.

Le noir et blanc des images notamment, à travers une infinité de nuances de gris, témoigne d’une manière étonnante de l’éprouvé halluciné de cet être humain en proie à la question de son identité et du vide de la vie. Sans les symboles permettant de le décrypter, les choses, les êtres, le temps, perdent leur sens et deviennent des lignes et de la lumière pures. La fin est étonnante, rendant compte de cette « paisibilité » qui peut accompagner - pour un temps - les « fous » dans leur monde à part…
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It Will Turn Your Life Upside Down

Author: Bill Kamberger from Baltimore, MD
12 April 2000
 

Jessua has never achieved the fame of Truffaut and Resnais, but he was at least their equal in talent. In this, his finest film, he explores a young man's withdrawal from Parisian bourgeois life into a world of his own. Is the man going insane? By conventional standards, yes, but it's clear that the life he's fleeing is madder still. Moreover, since we hear and see the events from his point of view, and since that point of view is unfailingly witty and astute about the underlying if not the literal truth, we even come to accept his delusions as more "real" than reality. The writing finds humor in the bleakest situations, while the direction reveals a Zen spirituality in the most banal images. Denner's performance is enough to give "psychotic charm" a good name, and he manages to be heartbreaking without ever resorting to obvious pathos. In short, a masterpiece.

4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:

A unique movie of benign schizophrenia (not split-personality)

Author: pluckpurr from United States
2 December 2010

I saw this movie on television in the late 19sixties - and was mesmerized - and haven't seen it since. I just checked Amazon and there is someone selling a video of it for $198.00. It is a very sweet film. Charming. Intelligent. Poetic. If you like taking walks in Springtime in a local uncrowded park, you might find it refreshing. There is a subtle ardor about it. It doesn't seem to 'pretend' anything. The 'Mystery' of it unfolds delicately, bit by bit, frame by frame. The 'Sorrow' of it is not built on mountains of angst, but rather a humorous metamorphosis that compares ordinary life to a pure renunciation of the trappings an ordinary life instills and sustains. Not a movie for 'Followers'. The 'Hero's' mindset or mental condition is obviously clinical, yet there is a simple beauty in it, something a person who grows up on a diet of 'Malls' will never understand.

Alain Jessua was one of the great mavericks of the French cinema;he was too modern to be labeled "old school" but he had ,fortunately,nothing to do with Godard,TRuffaut and co.Simply ,from this debut to "Paradis Pour Tous" (1982),he has never produced anything mediocre (let's be nice and forget the final works ).

"La Vie A L'Envers " begins with a tape played backwards ;a man is tired of his girlfriend ,of his nine-to-five work and decides to live without the others -I'm watching you,but I don't see you" -and the things ;it was the beginning of the sixties and France was entering the consumer society ,a society which was omnivorous in its appetite for apartments ,cars ,food ;and the main character turns this down;he has made his this sentence from " fight club" 'the things you own ends up owning you" ;and his bubble head girlfriend is a nuisance to live with at home,with her petty ambitions ("there's one of my movies just out ,let's go to the theater":the "movie" in question is an unbearable commercial )and her longing for a bourgeois life .It's not only misogyny:he even can do without his best friend ( "a friend I never see;"it's better that way" ).In an empty room ,he's never been so happy .When the doctor (the last human being he meets ) tells him he has a friend who can give him a nice place to live provided he continues his "work" (his recorded frame of minds),we think of an insane asylum right now.

Charles Denner gives a great performance of this rebel without a cause :no political or sentimental reason for such a behavior,and we never have the impression that the character is going insane . When he begins to enter "his" world ,he walks through a subway corridor covered with posters which read 'trust yourself".

In his sophomore effort ," Jeu De Massacre " ,Jessua would continue his study of deviancy: this time the hero,who makes up incredible stories , disappointed by a routine life and under an over possessive mother 's thumb,tries to live as a comics' hero; "Armaguedon" is " Vie A L'Envers " in reverse:the hero tries to attract the crowds ' attention by becoming some kind of terrorist ;and in his (at least to my eyes) final important work "Paradis Pour Tous" ,a shrink has found a new way of treating depression.

Between 1963 and 1982,Jessua only made six movies ,but they are all interesting ;to someone who would discover him,I 'd suggest "Traitement De Choc"(1972) ,his most accessible effort.

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Voilà c'est tout.Une seule photo;pas de Trivia,de critiques ni de sites externes