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The women of Rose c'est Paris:
Info:
"Bettina Rheims and
Serge Bramly's "Rose C'est Paris" is both a photographic monograph and a
feature-length film on DVD. This extraordinary work of art, in two different but
interlocking and complimentary formats, defies easy categorization. For in this
multi-layered opus of poetic symbolism, photographer Bettina Rheims and artist
Serge Bramly evoke the City of Light in a completely novel way: this is a Paris
of surrealist visions, confused identities, artistic phantoms, unseen
manipulation, obsession, fetish and seething desire. Equal parts erotica,
fashion shoot, art monograph, metaphysical mystery, social and cultural
archeaology of the French capital, and neo-noir arthouse movie - "Rose, C'est
Paris" is all of these and more. In a surrealistic inversion of the oft-imitated
1954 Parisian photobook by Ed van Elsken, "Love On The Left Bank", this
mesmerising work is the meandering tale of twin sisters, known only as B and R,
and a third principal - the city itself. When R returns to their apartment and
learns that B has been abducted following a violent struggle, a dreamlike
detective story unfolds in black and white on the streets, in the cafes and
cabarets, epicieries and musees, usines abondonees, and grands hotels of Paris.
But even this notional plot is submerged under layers of echo, reference and
homage - to artists like Rene Magritte, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalf, and Man
Ray; to the brilliant amorality of the Fantomas pulp novels of the early 20th
century; to photographers Lee Miller, Helmut Newton, Larry Clark, Henri Lartigue,
Guy Bourdin and Jeanloup Sieff; to various mythical sites and monuments of
Paris. What happened to the missing sister? Was there a plot? Was she really
kidnapped? Is she alive or dead? Was it murder? Suicide? Or just a nightmare? Or
is she now a punk rocker, a prostitute, a cabaret dancer, or possibly even a
nun? Did she marry and flee to India? Does R know more than she claims? Or
perhaps B has adopted her sister's identity - and it is in fact R who has gone
missing. Rheims and Bramly create a series of extraordinary tableaux suggesting
all these possibilities and many more. Featuring a host of extraordinary
figures, from Naomi Campbell, Monica Belluci, and Michelle Yeoh, to family
members, fashion models, porn stars and le pipole of Parisian society, "Rose
C'est Paris" is both immediately accessible as a delicious visual treat, a
refreshingly original work of erotica and a celebration of Paris that sidesteps
all the usual cliches. And yet the work remains infinitely mysterious in the way
it plays with genre and narrative, allusion and expectation. Like the city
itself, it can never be fully defined or explained, only experienced again and
again."
More of
Clara Ponsot, teamed this time with Caroline Boutier in La
Grande Vie, a 2009 movie
The women of La Commanderie, a
new TV series
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