Madame Baurès

A stroll through the present-day municipalities of Vincennes and Saint Mandé, once home to Madame Baurès, a woman and Communist. The filmmaker’s voice-over recounts the memory of the story that Raymonde had entrusted to him. Her own fragmented story attempts to stitch itself onto a wider history: the history of the Paris suburbs, factory work, the world of workers, the arrival of social housing, collective movements, personal clashes. The film allows the present to seep into this story, resonances emerge, coincidences happen. The camera is discreet, it records passers-by in these transformed towns, walkers in the Bois de Vincennes, it intercepts voices. And the filmmaker confronts the impossibility of exploring a woman’s struggle to exist. He is asked if he has the right to be there filming, who he is working for, if he has the authorisations. The fear that history be forgotten appears and remains fixed in the statues that bear witness to past struggles and no longer seem to be part of the landscape. Eventually, the present escapes, Madame Baurès disappears and the film follows her. For her body, there are statues, memorials finally brought back to life by memory. For her voice, there is an echo of “The Internationale”. She is no longer addressed as “she”, but “you”. A final letter, an adieu to a woman and her world. A film to help, to identify “ordinary people”, and perhaps tell the story of a woman who held fast, and the story of the notion of a dying municipality.

Clémence Arrivé