La Vallée close

LA VALLÉE CLOSE emerged from different elements and I was watching the elements orient themselves without being able to say where it was leading. These different vectors were converging at a single place and making the film itself this nexus: Petrarch, a geography book, a Giorgione painting, an erotic photo, an abandoned factory, the fountain at Vaucluse, and then inspiring correspondences between all these, as if validating them, the text by Lucretius on the movement of atoms, or more exactly, Bergson’s summary of it that he did in a book for philosophy students. But actually this film originated in the water of the Sorgue. There were a few deep-dive expeditions to find out, where the water originates. That mystery is also at the heart of Petrarch’s poetry. And so these elements should hold our attention, produce a tension that’s going to orient everything towards the place of the film, whose subject, will not reveal itself as a whole until its end. (J.C. Rousseau interviewed by Cyril Neyrat)

In the presence of Jean-Claude Rousseau.