Le Bateau du père

Le Bateau du père begins with the filmmaker’s father hands over the camera to her mother to film the children romping around in the yard of the family home. Twenty years later, when Clémence Hébert quite literally retraces her father’s footsteps, the house that was once so solid, protective and cocooning is no more than a ruin, the garden overgrown. There is nothing left of the man smiling to his wife, a child in his arms, save the desperate letters to his daughter, memories of his angry outbursts, a newspaper article relating his death in a fire in his flat, an urn of ashes scattered into the sea. The faded images at the beginning of the film echo a grainy photo in which the whole family, children and grandchildren, gather round the grandfather: a primitive scene. The unspoken words that send back a mirror image of family unity are what cause its disaggregation and condemns it to implosion. (Yann Lardeau)