Le Gymnase

“Véronique manages one of those town-based keep-fit centres where sport is gradually giving way to leisure activities. With trainers who see themselves as stars and women members who push their gym activities to the point of becoming anorexic, she has a lot on her hands. In her own way, she tries to give satisfaction to the one thousand two hundred people or so that come to the centre on a daily basis. All of the characters in this closed world, cut off from everyday concerns and the constraints of time, have their own little habits. Like a womb, the gym is a place where each can regress as they please. Some do themselves good, others the opposite, but all put in a prodigious amount of energy in order to stave off the inevitable. In the centre, words are few and far between, but the body has its own language, and its ills are heavy with meaning” (Jean-Marc La Rocca)