OFFICIAL SELECTION – IN COMPETITION
The 1980s having for some time entered into legend, it is to be expected that each of its fetishes will be dissected, carefully passed through the mythographic machine. This is the case today with the famous school of actors set up in 1986 by Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Romans at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre. Nursery that left its mark, giving birth to both a band and a generation, where Bruno Todeschini, Vincent Pérez, Agnès Jaoui, Marianne Denicourt, Thibault de Montalembert, Eva Ionesco, among others, passed. But also Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, who devotes her last feature film to him, in competition at Cannes. The film is presented in the form of an album of memories, but also of an assessment of what has been invented, between these walls, of states of the body (nervous, carried away, convulsive), of which Bruni Tedeschi has become , as a key actress in 1990s auteur cinema, the depositary. In this, The Almond Trees belongs just as much to his autobiographical vein (A castle in Italy2013) than to his reflections on theater (actresses2007).
Without bothering too much with contextualization, the film opens with the entrance examination, a skimming process which, among hordes of candidates, will lead to the detachment of a promotion and, even more, of a troupe. All under the leadership of director Pierre Romans (Micha Lescot), right arm of a Chéreau who was invisible at first (a shadow, a phantom glory), who immediately announces to them that they are not looking for good actors (« yuck! »), but something else, taking a risk. The film is centered more precisely around the crazy love linking Stella (formidable Nadia Tereszkiewicz), the director’s fictional double, to Etienne (Sofiane Bennacer), the dark handsome of the band, indomitable and heroin addict.
Once the promo is set up, the little troupe leaves for New York for an internship at the Actors Studio – and the film recalls the relationship between the Almond Trees and Lee Strasberg’s famous method. On his return, Chéreau (Louis Garrel as a monster of tempestuous work) recovers this small world to mount Platonovwhile Romans is working on Penthesilea. By dint of living together, the troupe ends up forming an autonomous and organic community, loving to play and playing to love each other, launched in a quest for permanent intensity.
A certain hysteria
Each school develops its own aesthetic and there is no mystery that the Almond Trees was that of a certain hysteria, which the film attests perfectly, considering the game essentially as a state of crisis (nerves, laughter, tears). However, hysteria is to be taken here less in a pejorative sense than in an etymological sense: it is a game “in the belly”, irrational, tripal, which is defended by Chéreau and his followers. what The Almond Trees is undoubtedly the recent film among the most faithful to the 1980s, of which it restores the colorful touch, the frenetic momentum, the mingled impulses of life and death, the candle burned at both ends.
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