Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on MUBI. Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel's Jessica Forever, which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on MUBI, is showing from December 4 – January 2, 2019 in MUBI's Debuts series.
In the opening sequence of Jessica Forever there is a brief segment which zooms in on a scrunched adolescent body, a forehead adorned with ash-blond hair tightly pressing on to bloody knees, staining the tidy grey sweatpants the young boy is wearing. Suddenly, a hand slides into the frame, fingers and palm caressing the wounded body part, rearranging the frame according to a center of intimacy. Lingering attentively on the oozing injury opens up a space for the viewer’s empathy, while the camera brings into focus a visual metaphor that sits at the heart of the film as a hymn of love and vulnerability.
The story of Jessica Forever, the debut feature by acclaimed short filmmaker duo Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, could easily be situated behind a wall in any of their previous ones. Their effusive works are interlaced through visual and emotional parallelism, starting from each one’s early singular projects to their shared 2014 Golden Bear short winner, As Long as Shotguns Remain. In 2018, joining the company of transgressive French voices such as Bertrand Mandico and Yann Gonzalez, Poggi and Vinel thrust their own provocative takes on coming-of-age stories and the synthesis of violence and tenderness in the collaborative manifesto Flamme, published in Cahiers du cinéma, which advocates “a cinema for sweaty dreamers.” Drawing extensively on the notions of loss, tribal teenagerhood, family, and the possible remedy of loneliness, Poggi and Vinel stand out in the contemporary French dreamscape by proposing an antidotal treatment of such wounds instead of their monstrous incarnations. In Jessica Forever, the directors offer a seamless succession of sensual continuity and atmospheric synchronicity to derive a story rhythm that contracts and refracts, evolving candidly from its short film predecessors.
Jessica is a warrior leader, mother figure and a silent savior. Played by Aomi Muyock with candor and an aftertaste of mysticism, she rescues orphans with a violent disposition by calming them and inducting them into a communal life that is the sacrosanct incarnation of family. Being together means remaining safe, as swarms of murderous drones pose a constant death threat, forcing the family to go into hiding or fire back at the unnamed but omnipresent enemy. Together, they inhabit a home that abides by a notion of collectivity and mutual endeavor that undermines all predispositions of what masculinity might be. The young men clean, tidy, scrub, vacuum; they receive gifts and look after each other. They even nap together as a daily ritual, elevating quiet togetherness to a way of knowing each other. The film’s title aside, the protagonist here is a group one, a living and breathing organism of imperfect grown-ups with Jessica as its gravitational center. Divided in tableaux, the film follows fragments of the family’s path, starting from newcomer Kevin’s (Eddy Suiveng) initiation, his ceremonial disrobing and strapping on of a bullet-proof vest. All the costumes blend medieval warrior insignia with contemporary special forces attire, bringing forward the mythical hero in each and every man.
An unnerving eeriness permeates Jessica Forever, as the cinematic world adheres to a coherent hyperrealism, with the digital cameras and special effects sharpened as a blade that cuts through space, people and objects alike. In a similar way, without singling out a main character, the film’s camerawork reflects the statement that everything is equally important. In a symbolic plane, it would make allusions to the mythological origins of marriage, when the boys eat pomegranates, the fruit which infamously seduced young Persephone to descent to Hades, according to the ancient Greeks. A combat sequence ends with Jessica holding Kevin’s wounded body in a manner reminiscing Mary’s iconography in the pietà. Without prioritizing neither the symbolic nor the realistic, Jessica Forever presents a parallel world rather than a dystopian one, masterfully eluding all science-fiction clichés. The film prefers to explore a notion of transitory time rather than simplistically reinventing a possible future, while its geographically abstract setting could be framed as anytime, anywhere.
Indeed, the suburban houses and empty lanes gesture towards something post-apocalyptic but only as far as the original etymology of the word is concerned, that of “uncovering” a state of reality. It brings forth a nuance of intimacy to an otherwise non-personal background to point out the shooting locations oscillated between Vinel’s hometown Toulouse and Poggi’s native Corsica. Another layer of reality is deeply embedded in a video game aesthetic (references include Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt) which is definitive for Vinel’s earlier works Martin Cries (2017) and Our Love is Powerful Enough (2014) and more softened in Jessica Forever. While the stark daylight flattens the frame, tinting it yellow and arresting it in an ivory casket, all the exteriors seem pre-mapped as a space of action and exposure at the same time. As the group takes shelter from the drones sent to assassinate them in an abandoned beach house, the sense of impending doom lingers on. However enchanting the contemplation of crimson sunsets and splashing waves may be, it arrests this momentum before the world collapses, tuned to the procession from string music to heavy bass and transcendent post-metal instrumentals.
The film’s gentleness captures the vibrating tension between the physical and the psyche, mirroring Jessica’s healing presence for all of the man-made family. It is presence, not actual engagement that defines her character, as she’s felt through whispers and gestures, like a deity that one believes into existence. She could easily be both present and absent as Muyock’s taciturn gaze and emotional restrain are equally representative of her character’s attributes, as well as the woman warrior ardor and her fighting skills. Extensive physical training was required from both professional and non-professional actors involved in the project, yet the final result is one of buoyant strength that comes with introspection and vulnerability. By allowing the spectator to share both the family’s togetherness, as well as their individual loneliness, the camera pays attention to the ineffable bond of violence and tenderness, that streak which defines man from beast. As in the filmmakers’ preceding shorts, a natural outlet to oscillating feelings is provided by one confessional voiceover after another. In a distancing mechanism, the narration unearths a shattering idea of intimacy, grief, and longing: “Please don’t blame us. We never learned to say ‘goodbye.’”
Composing a distinctive style, the films of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel have reached their own apotheosis with Jessica Forever. The film also achieves an aural sensuality that radiates from images, music, and light, which in turns contribute to the tonal shifts its story proposes, from serene plateau to overwhelming grief and anger. That shift, however, is not one of abrupt change, rather an oscillation, which is, nonetheless, transgressive in the way it brings these poles in a tactile closeness. By making a film so alluring, one that lulls the viewer into belief, Poggi and Vinel submerge the viewer into their hyperreal world, that allows one to dwell in a pure state of corporeality, granted that a loving hand can heal any stinging traces of violence.