It’s either the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th. The rain over Paris won’t stop, so the Seine River is inevitably overflowed. A woman finds refuge in one of the many cafés in Montmartre, where she finds more people imprisoned by the flood: the waiters, a policeman, part of the Cirque du Soleil troupe, and composer Erik Satie (1866-1925). But the woman is not any woman: she’s artist and model Suzanne Valadon, who had been the only and fleeting passionate love in Satie’s life. One could say this chance encounter sums up the whole plot of the film, because what comes next is a series of dazzling choreographies influenced both by ballet, the circus arts, and, of course, Satie’s avant-garde compositions (which are played here by Dutch master Reinbert de Leeuw). Nominated for a Grammy, Satie and Suzanne invents for itself a unique way to portrait an artist; anything but conventional, with a taste for melancholy and extravagance Satie himself would have appreciated. –Mar del Plata International Film Festival
