SANDBOX

In real life, some people want to become surgeons, others policemen, policewomen or cab drivers. Some dream of love, of good fortune, of getting pride of place within the community. The same happens within this virtual territory, on this French-speaking Californian island. Out here, we do things as if it were real life.

Los Santos is a town nestled on an island. A town with its institutions, its penal system, its workings and failures. A game-city with one main rule: in Los Santos you act as in real life. Los Santos is made of virtual bricks and was created on an online server of the GTA V game. Every player has to find themselves a role to keep the society running. Policemen, policewomen, doctors or tradespeople, you have to find your place and try to master the appropriate technical vocabulary to respect reality. As for the outside world, there is no mention of it. In real life you don’t talk about the outside world. Yet, this imposed realism sometimes teeters. Here, from the stereotyped bodies of the game’s avatars, often men’s, with bulging muscles, come out the players’ juvenile voices and their adolescent expressions. Because at the edge of the game there is reality. Beyond the city noises, the film gradually transforms its field of observation and begins to listen to a generation, the one that experiences the world as it is. Some players try to imagine a society that does not reproduce the violence of the outside world. In Los Santos, as in real life, racist or sexist comments are forbidden. But, as in real life, this in no way prevents racism and sexism from persisting. So how can you live in collective harmony and without sliding into authoritarianism? How can you find consolation regarding the real world and transform here what does not work “outside”? Observing the institutions and more personal scenes in the same way, the film brings to life a world that is more real than it appears, with one reassuring exception – that here you can change your place, die and be endlessly reborn.

Clémence Arrivé