Ô HEUREUX JOURS!

It all begins with a family reunion that, thanks to the promising novelty of the filmmaker’s brother’s remarriage in the United States, brings together parents and four siblings, who this time have left their respective spouses and children behind. Back in the nuclear family of her childhood, Cabrera thinks she is filming the event but in fact fails to properly activate the camera, as her professional composure falters. Building on these faulty acts as well as a variety of filmic media, the filmmaker creates the texture of a home movie filmed over ten years. Already in her 1995 film diary, Demain et encore demain, Cabrera filmed a simple piece of bread “in order to see it”, as if the camera alone was able to bring order to the chaotic substance of reality. By including in O Happy Days her search in Algeria for the roots of her mother, born anonymously, she cascades this approach down the generations. But this lovingly accumulated footage forcibly takes on an elegiac note: seeing it again means anticipating death on the faces of the living. Is it a coincidence that the filmmaker’s son holds the camera at the end… as if offering a counterpoison? (Charlotte Garson)