Tenir la distance

Intuitions, doubts, remorse: in the studio of the great film editor Yann Dedet, the filmmaker Joachim Lafosse and the editor are struggling to give birth to the feature film After Love.

It is with Yann Dedet, the great French film editor known for his work with Truffaut and Pialat that the Belgian Joachim Lafosse has chosen to edit his fifth film, L’Économie du couple (After Love), the chronicle of a divorce and its emotional and economic repercussions on the couple and their children. A film editor since 1995, Katarina Warthena reveals the core of this process, criss-crossed by the intuitions of a highly experienced editor and a younger author, whose script is clearly enriched by an intimate experience of separation. Few documentaries show the making of a film from such close quarters, with the choice of shots and the dramatic shifts in the overall story arc. Yann Dedet’s proposals tend towards what is “least intentional”, crafting the most precious element of fiction: the intimate unfolding of life and its rhythm. If at times he goes against the filmmaker’s vague desire for meaning, at other times he knows how to take a backseat and encourage him simply by listening. The film shows that the interaction, sometimes fluid and sometimes tense, between two collaborators depends on an “economy of the couple”, whose intimacy is bared to the outside world when the critical step of a first screening for the producers arrives. (Charlotte Garson)