Le Voyage à Vézelay

In April 2005, shortly after the death of his father, Pierre Creton visits Vézelay, where Georges Bataille is buried. His friends Marie Le Pallec and Bénaïd Mostefaï accompany him. The voice of actress Françoise Lebrun – off most often – escorts them as well throughout the entire journey. She plays the role of narrator, describing what happens and addressing her characters (“You there...” ), and doubles as hotel philosopher. What is the purpose of this voice? To make this simple excursion, a pilgrimage at best, into a tale or a novel? To absorb the embarrassment of an enterprise accomplished in the wake of the death of a father with whom the filmmaker had virtually no contact? No doubt. Let’s just say that the presence of Françoise serves to highlight the already existing ambivalence and incongruity; not without irony or malice, her narration redoubles and in her words, a voyage unfolds that has much to do with doubles, obsessively so: images shot by Pierre Creton of his dead father; a dog’s corpse is picked up, then abandoned alongside the road; a meeting with a strangely talkative priest, possibly a fake; finally, a night spent under the stars wrapped in a white sheet, a curious sort of shroud.

"In an effort of making life and death easier for us, I asked my father if it would be all right for me to film his funeral. My father suggests, for images of him alive, to use the photographs of the Tour de France races he participated in. He passed away during the last stages of the Tour de France in the summer of 2002. I contemplate taking to the road and going from his grave to the grave of Georges Bataille, whose writings about the excessiveness of desire and death accompanied me at that time. I asked my friends Marie Le Pallec and Bénaïd Mostefaï to join me on this journey to Vézelay. I asked this last thing of my father: that he somehow participate in one of my films. I bought a camera to film his funeral, my first camera. Somewhat shaken, I ended up with images from the hospital and the morgue, and we started to write based on these relic images. Le Voyage à Vézelay, that’s the invention of a new family: Françoise, Marie, Bénaïd, and me. A community of those who don’t have a community, to quote Bataille. I edited the film here, at Jean’s house, with Michel Bertrou, a friend who is also a veterinarian and takes care of my animals. All subsequent films will be edited here, in this house."
(Pierre Creton)