Élégant

A comic tragedy blending love and hate against a rock and roll backdrop ! Having gone to the Magdalene Islands to give two concerts and make a music video with director Yan Giroux, Chocolat drinks two bottles of whisky too much and the course of things change. Seven hours after their plane lands, the havoc they have caused has already caught up to them and reached a level that will impact the band’s future. The events make up a film that immediately allies the viewer with the naive rockers as they accumulate bad decisions, eventually finding themselves alone and against everything. Following their adventures, we discover the fraternity that unites the band members and the complex relationships they maintain with authority, their families, and their loves. In line with his other short films ("Il faut que je parle à mon père", "Synchro") and his first full-length documentary ("Cubanos"), "Élégant" allows the filmmaker to continue an ongoing exploration of sequence shots and themes of family, masculinity and nature. Produced, directed, filmed and edited by Yan Giroux, the documentary is more than a simple video recording of the events, it is the assertion of an auteur’s vision that borrows from direct cinema in its spontaneous relationship to the real, as well as contemporary filmmaking in its concern for staging through affirmed framing. By interweaving chaotic events with scenes filmed in the magnificent landscapes of the islands, the editing allows the film to break away from sensationalism, inscribing the characters’ actions in the realm of the poetic.