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View Full Version : How to watch a girl on her way to adulthood? Parler Tout Bas...


edgar93
08-11-2009, 06:15 PM
Ok, this is even more interesting than the Moi...Lolita one. I always found PTB as a very strange video, even considering that MF and LB made it. There's obviously a message hidden in the video, very difficult to figure out.

Again, thanks to RondasX and Alizee Latino for the translation :).

If you are willing to read it, please take your time! it is totally worth it. I'm still working on the second part of this, but you could read this in the meanwhile.

Parler Tout Bas (http://alizeeamerica.com/play/?v=52)

How to watch a girl on her way to adulthood?

L'alizé, Alizée's second single is not filmed by Laurent Boutonnat. Not because he didn't feel inspired by the song, the reason being he too busy mixing the album "Gourmandises". Since Laurent Boutonnat is involved in Alizée's career (more than he was in Christia Mantzke's (http://www.musicme.com/Christia-Mantzke/esta/)), he voluntarily took the camcorder for "graphic tests". Despite everything, these are always very different to his old films. Here, Laurent Butonnat has on mind a continuation, as he did 15 years ago with Mylene Farmer.

We could predict a continuation of Moi...Lolita in the next few months. Everything is set up to follow the future of this girl, for which the producer has done everything to get the interest of the public. The camcorder, always in a low angle shot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-angle_shot), emphasizes Alizée's short height and turns it into something charismatic, taking advantage of this to turn her into a star, while at that moment she was unknown to the public.

Everything has a meaning like in Moi...Lolita: The places, the characters, their habits, their temperament, the way they get along with each other. The characters didn't have to do much: simply run behing the bus, wash the clothes and and warm up the the dancers at the Bain-Douches. This is indeed a continuation that comes along with the song, even though the song doesn't seem to. It's in the fantasy and dreams that Lolita's destiny is going to be based on in this second masterpiece, which can be easily predicted to be as the last one of the series. Laurent Boutonnat forgets about the places involved in the 1st episode and only focuses on his main character, on its destiny to be exact. Laurent Boutonnat has never continued his characters for so long.

The characters are seen twice, then they disappear. Oftenly this is on purpose. This is also the 2nd appearance of Alizée's boyfriend, whom she ignores in the 1st episode and whom she definitely falls in love with in this production. It is better understood because Mylene Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat's have chosen a 16-year-old for their first production together. Mylene Farmer is not 20 anymore and can't take the role of the gilr-woman anymore. Childhood is still one of Mylene and Laurent's favourite topic. They both are over 40 and the XXI century just began, they want to go back to their Plus Grandir (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUJwJ4qlYug) (1985) and Giorgino (http://www.giorginolefilm.com/)(1994)-style environment.

Alizée is in a transition, only she can tell what is to leave the infancy, only she can hold into porcelain dolls instead of facing the adult age. It turned out to be very difficult to imagine "Parler Tout Bas" being portrayed by Mylene Farmer. It is Alizée's 16 year-old-age that surrounds this film, this is the main subject. It's only thanks to Alizée that this film is possible.

For this new adventure, Laurent Boutonnat changes his chief operator, Jean-Pierre Sauvaire, who used to be loyal to the director of photography (LB) through his 10 years of films. Jean-Pierre got into the comedy films later on. For Moi...Lolita's filming, he requested Philippe Pavans to be on his team. This time he worked with a feature film chief operator, Jean-Marie Dreujou, midwife of Augustion (Anne Fontaine- 1995), he also was part of the last movies of Jean Becker: Les Enfants du Marais , un Crime au Paradis (Jean Becker - 2001), and La Femme du Cosmonaute as well.

Laurent Boutonnat always tries to give a cinematographic style to his works since he made Plus Grandir in 1985. Parler Tout Bas was filmed using a 35mm standard film, even though it is no longer than 4 minutes 7 seconds. It is actually one his shortest films, it was aired for the first time on french tv on April 25th 2001. It was aired many times until the end of summer 2001.

Ten young girls where chosen to take the role of the living dolls.You can see some of them moving thier arms, while other dolls have rigid extremities, the arms twisted, just like the olds dolls, made of porcelain. Fitted thermo-formed masks where made for the dolls, hand-painted. They were actually made of a special plastic, which took the shape of the dolls' head, all this due to heat and a same mould which was used for all of them.

The dresses they wear are inspired on the ones the old dolls used to wear. All the decorations are natural. Laurent Boutonnat has great skills to get used to the environment, great skills to use what the environment gives him. This reminds us of the Regrets (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdYgi1BFBaY) Graveyard, in which he didn't have to change anything, he had taken advantage of the nooks, the halls, the broken walls.The ruined house of Lolita was filmed just outside of an old Militar Fort, in Val de marne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_de_Marne)(it looks like the Maisons-Alfort (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maisons-Alfort) valley), he just added the natural items, like the dead leaves and dead tree. The desertic field is the one of Moi...Lolita, although the barley crops has been taken away and the stubble can be seen. This is what emphasizes even more the irreal characters of the story.
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The actor playing the young boy in love with Alizée is Jérome Devoise, he is the mixing assistant of the Guillermo Tell studio (http://www.guillaumetell.com/us/index.html), partner of Laurent Boutonnat for 4 years. He worked on Nathalie Cardone's album (Boutonnat participated on it), and also worked on Alizée's. It is the demeanour of this audio engineer what encourages Laurent Boutonnat to give him the role of this man with notorious disorders.

A wooden shelter stands on the ground, it doesn't know what miracle is originated below a gray sky, from which a heavy rain is falling. This day resembles those gray days in which nobody likes to go out, in which all the crop fields are empty. The camera moves beneath the black structure, which seems to have been devastated by an earthquake or a great fire. This structure is nothing else than Lolita's house seen in the 1st Episode (WHAAAAT!?). Childhood is gone, the house is devastated, nothing will be the same, and from the house only this black structure is left , which will be the only structure Lolita will need to rebuild home, a personality that won't resemble the old one, not her childhood. Lolita is inside this structure, she is in her devastated room, where the toys crawl on the dirty floor, where the wind swallows the sheets from the bed. Lolita fiercely holds her teddy bear in her arms, as she would hold her youth, which soon she would lose. The upcoming view of the floor resembles the one in "Sans Logique (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14FzIWwOAHM)", a floor made of soil, ocre, where old objects crawl, this objects take us to the diegesis (when the events told by the narrator do happen). Here we can find old toys, which are from the beginning of the century. Old dolls with their hair messed-up, with the hands misplaced, the mini bathtubs, a little wooden desk, an empty open toy box; all this is being showered in this rain which will only stop until the adolescense crisis (BUT AT THE END OF THE VIDEO IT DOESN'T STOP RAINING???). They toys take a shower in this tasteless sludge. You can notice that there is another bed beside Lolita's, probably her sister's, the one appearing in Moi...Lolita. The walls of the house are still standing. The acquired values in the childhood stay there, but it is the interior that is in the need to fill up, since it is usually emptied by the adolescence.

Throughout this post-childhood story, a certain doll takes our attention. She's got a whithish colour that terrifies, she is not looking at anywhere since she has no eyes. She is placed on a baby chair, motionless. She is made of porcelain and she's wearing sky-blue-colour clothes. She's the perfect doll, concebida bajo control, she's not used as a childhood symbol, she is actually Lolita's image. She's that image that will stay on her after all her torments. The chilhood is being portrayed by the clumsily-stewed teddy bear Lolita doesn't want to leave behind. It is the teddy bear who will leave her soon, not the doll.

----To be Continued----

I found many answers to my concerns about PTB in the 2 last paragraphs. I think it is like this: The teddy bear represents Alizée's childhood, which she doesn't want to leave. The dolls represent Alizée's adulthood, which she is just about to enter. At the end of the video she buries her teddy bear, meaning that she just went into adulthood. BTW, I'd suggest you to click on the link to the videos, the comparison is scarily true!

wildfire
09-28-2009, 02:45 PM
thanks! this is very interesting... Is there a part 2?

Criss_pl
09-28-2009, 06:03 PM
Woah. How could I miss it:confused: Very interesting. I wasn't paying too much attention to PTB, and It never come to my mind that this could be a continuation of previous video, but on the other side it was LB who made this.
And I second wildfire, it could be even in French, link or anything.

user472884
09-28-2009, 08:13 PM
The actor playing the young boy in love with Alizée is...

hope they didn't pay him, I would've done it for free..........

hell, I would have paid them! and brought lunch!

edgar93
09-28-2009, 08:29 PM
thanks! this is very interesting... Is there a part 2?

well, since nobody really paid attention to the thread, I didn't finish the translation.
I might keep working on the 2nd part after I finish the JPVA one.

wildfire
09-29-2009, 05:37 AM
you rock! and roll!:D

Unrealizée
09-29-2009, 09:18 AM
Wow you are really good in describing backgrounds. Like many others, I never paid a lot of attention to the video of Parler Tout Bas, because it seemed scary to me, and at the same time I didn't know what this video was supposed to express. Now you have unveiled big parts of this enigma.

Criss_pl
09-29-2009, 03:29 PM
For me that video was also... weird/scary? dunno
@Jalen
I agree with you:p
@edgar93
Does the original text floats somewhere over the web? Could you provide me a link to it? I would be very grateful:)