Ricardo et la peinture

This new documentary by Swiss-French veteran Barbet Schroeder is perfectly encapsulated by its subtitle: “40 years of friendship”. With simplicity always the best tool, the director doesn’t need to try anything new here, as the camera, like in a Howard Hawks movie, stays on the same level as the subject: Ricardo Cavallo, an Argentinian painter born in 1954 and based in France since 1976. Cavallo is a hermit with an ascetic temperament, fascinated by the history of sculpture and painting, especially that of Velásquez. He is a passionate character and a humble craftsman, exploring the landscape of Finistère and watching the change of the tides, heir to a time when painting required concentration, silence and frugal living. Schroeder knocked on the door of his friend’s house and asked to come in with a small film crew. He eventually spent two years there. But the portrait of this man described by Schroeder as a “form of incarnation of good” is also reconfigured; Cavallo knows that this film is about him, but he’s always slipping away from its centre. Instead, he proposes us a fantastic journey through the history of art, remembering that “a painting is not made to be beautiful, it’s simply a matter of life and death”. (Francisco Ferreira)

Barbet Schroeder: MORE (1969), LA VALLÉE (1972), GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA: A SELF PORTRAIT (1974), MAÎTRESSE (1975), KOKO: A TALKING GORILLA (1978), TRICHEURS (1984), THE CHARLES BUKOWSKI TAPES (1985), BARFLY (1987), REVERSAL OF FORTUNE (1990), SINGLE WHITE FEMALE (1992), KISS OF DEATH (1995), BEFORE AND AFTER (1996), DESPERATE MEASURES (1998), LA VIRGEN DE LOS SICARIOS (2000), MURDER BY NUMBERS (2002), TERROR’S ADVOCATE (2007), THE BEAST IN THE SHADOW (2008), AMNESIA (2015), THE VENERABLE W. (2017)