In this whimsical fable, Resnais deftly interweaves three story lines: the creation of an early-20th-century utopia; romantic high jinks at a school conference; and a fantasy sparked by F/X pioneer Georges Méliès.
In all of his work, Bussotti makes frequent reference to the body, to sexuality. This to remind musicians — especially classically trained ones — that they are not body-less angels, that they are not just their musical thoughts, that they are still, in the last analysis, flesh and bones. Thus the erotic is not for shocking, but to stress that making music involves the body in a very direct way.
In this film, as in all my previous ones, there is a direct connection between inner urges and cinematic rendering. I tried to visualize my present aspiration to recover, through the various ways taught by one’s experience, the easiness, directness and ripeness proper to children’s relationships and affective life. This film is maybe a track of this path backwards. – A. L.
