À peine ombre

La Borde is a famous French clinic because of the choice made by its founder, Jean Oury, in 1953, to radically challenge psychiatric practice and also the relationships and hierarchy of access to knowledge between patients and carers. To describe the unusual landscape around the building, shaped as much by places as people, Nazim Djemaï rolls out a series of portraits, long sequences of fixed shots. Through a succession of speeches, ranging from a flood of words to silence, from patients and members of the care-team, surprise, emotion, gravity and occasionally comedy single out so clearly each of the individuals “facing the extreme solitude of illness’” (Nazim Djemaï) that the anticipated distribution of roles is turned on its head.  (Jean-Pierre Rehm)