Journal d’un montage

Following a film in the editing phase – that very special moment of writing when the film slowly finds its form, its rhythm, its music, is subject to discussion and emerges from limbo. In 1994, editing still involved celluloid film, before the advent of Avid or, in other words, digital editing. Jacques Comets appears in every shot, at the editing table, joyful and full of humour, happy to be working in total complicity with Christine Pascal. Annette Dutertre is his assistant editor. They playfully decided to film themselves, without this causing any change in their attitudes and gestures. For many years, these images remained in a box, until Annette Dutertre decided to turn them into a film.
The editing room at Joinville is a sort of cavern, you live in darkness or semi-darkness for the film and because of it. The outside world ceases to exist. It is the cinema’s burrow. With no offscreen. There is a lot of smoking, laughter and dreaming, and little by little the film finds its own language. Christine Pascal is radiant, she laughs and laughs, her laughter is endless, she charms and the actress in her often shows through the film director. She is stunningly beautiful. A magical moment: one morning, she arrives at the editing room exhausted after a sleepless night. As Jacques Comets sits down at the editing table, she lies down on a camp bed and falls asleep. A deeply moving moment, of total abandonment (the film can be made without her, it is in good hands).
Adultery, a User’s Guide talks about sex, and daringly so. During the editing, Christine Pascal revels in having made it but, at the same time, we feel that she is scared. How far can she go, what can be shown and what cannot be shown? How can the actors be led to do things that they don’t dare? This is also why she falls asleep, withdraws from a moment of editing and the adult world. Rebellious and full of laughter, adorable in her intelligence and sincerity, it is hard to believe that she only has a few months of life left to live.

Serge Toubiana (blog, 13 octobre 2012)