Flickering Ghosts of Love Gone By (Et j’aime à la fureur)

I have few memories of my childhood, but I do remember one thing...

I refused to eat breakfast.

Since discovering the cinema when I was little...

...I collected copies of films.

The journey of the little girl with her parents...

...is one of the first films that I had.

I made this same journey.

Thanks to the reel numbers, I reconstructed its itinerary.

They left from Brittany...

...passed through Paris...

...then went down to the Riviera.

I played the film over and over again, even though I knew the images by heart.

I loved the excitement of loading a new spool...

...and the discovery of what I would find on it.

Seeing the lives of others fascinated me.

I tried to assess the character of these anonymous people, from their faces.

I created a destiny for them...

...preferably tragic if I felt that they had stupid faces.

Over more than 30 years, I've amassed hundreds and hundreds of reels.

But I always remember this first film with the little girl.

The parents we saw in the picture, seemed to be in love...

...and full of kindness for their child.

Such family happiness was quite foreign to me...

Incomprehensible.

There are plenty of things from my childhood that I don't remember.

No doubt there were times that are better forgotten.

We often idealise our memories.

If I could see reality again, revisit the past...

...would my memories look like these images?

The best thing about memories...

...is to be able to invent them.

But in this case, what can I know of my own life?

I believe that my childhood was particularly one of suffering.

Not just because my mother didn't buy me Pif comics...

...because they were communist.

All my friends had Mexican jumping beans, except me,

...for fear of the big night.

There is a place of which I have very fond memories.

Ambleteuse, a village in northern France...

...where I spent all my summer holidays.

My best friend's father showed films by Keaton and Chaplin...

...with a Super 8 projector, in the attic of his house.

Here he is, my friend's father.

His name was Philippe Lebrun. Dr Lebrun.

He'd wanted to become a director, but his parents had opposed it.

He became a doctor...

...and I'm convinced that all his life he's regretted it.

I loved Dr Lebrun who showed us films...

...of authentic tradition.

I remember his voice echoing in the dark.

For the first time I realised that a father could be kindly...

...and spend time with his children.

My father had never spent an hour, playing with me, or taking care of me.

And here is Sabine... my first love-interest.

Sabine was the sister of a boy from our band.

She often came to watch movies with us... "The attic clan".

Sitting next to her...

...I took advantage of the dark to snuggle up next to her.

One day I took her hand...

...and she didn't pull it away.

Later I kissed her on the mouth, but without using my tongue.

Nobody had told me that could happen.

This is how, as 11-year-old Fege...

...I discovered the beauty of cinema and feminine sensuality.

Since then, for me, they've remained associated.

A few years ago, I received a call from a solicitor.

A distant member of the family had died.

He asked me if I collected movies.

There were old boxes of film that no one was interested in.

I had 48 hours to pick them up before it all got dumped.

I hurried up.

The name "Expedit" was on many of the boxes.

On the way back...

...I thought about the name, Expedit. It was not unknown to me.

My grandfather's boat was called the Saint Expedit.

It was, until the 1940s, our real family name.

For obscure reasons, just after the war...

...the name of the other branch was adopted.

Expedit is the patron saint of urgent causes.

And that of schoolchildren, driving licence applicants...

...drug dealers and premature-ejaculators.

At home, I took a spool randomly and loaded the projector.

I remember being startled.

I found images from the Opale coast...

...taken near Ambleteuse.

I saw my father young, very thin, and me as a young child.

I don't remember a gesture of my father's tenderness towards me...

...and I saw him, before my eyes, stroke my hair.

Another thing bothered me.

The physical similarity between my father as young and me at the same age.

With me having the feeling of having nothing in common with him...

...I was faced with this evidence... I was his spitting image.

Or the other way round.

The image I have of my father, is this one...

A fat man for whom I simply did not exist.

He had more consideration for his dogs than for me.

My father was a biologist.

He did medical analyses... blood, urine, stool.

In his laboratory there was a cabinet of shitty jars...

...that people brought to have analysed.

It was disgusting.

My father loved hunting,

He liked to eat game that he was proud to have shot.

He spoke with his mouth full. He didn't eat, he wolfed his food.

He burped and farted at the table, and that amused him.

It's because of him, since childhood...

...I felt a deep disgust for food.

There are many things that I've never tasted...

...so the idea of swallowing them is unthinkable to me.

As a child, they tried to force me to eat, without succeeding.

I was scolded, I was forbidden to leave the table if I hadn't finished.

I limited my diet to certain dishes...

...mostly french fries, occasionally steaks...

...that I took like a medicine without chewing them...

after cutting them into pieces.

I tried to remedy this dietary disorder...

...and tried several therapies at different stages of my life.

One of them, extremely violent, called Primal Cry...

...consists of screaming, to release the pain...

...buried deep within oneself.

I then had the most horrible nightmares...

...that an Italian-Spanish director of 'giallo' could imagine.

During these sessions...

...whole swaths of memories of my childhood...

...came rushing back.

Everything was there, fortunately inaccessible...

"'deliberately forgotten memories to protect myself.

It didn't take away my disgust for food...

...but it was a revelation.

All of our past is within us.

Even if we don't have access to it, it's all there, perfectly recorded.

I forgot that I was able to live like that.

However, in those boxes I found a film shot in Ambleteuse...

...where I wanted to look like Buster Keaton...

in "College Sportsman for Love".

There's the sailing-dinghy belonging to my grandfather.

I didn't even remember that someone had filmed it.

Strangely, there were among the inherited movies...

...another shot years ago which showed a similar situation.

I found it amazing that another child, one of my ancestors...

...experienced before me the same need to reach the open sea...

...and find his freedom.

This coincidence reminded me of an odd experience that happened to me...

...while I was smoking some excellent weed.

I suddenly had a kind of mystical revelation...

...all the more clear and obvious, that it's hard to put into words.

We are a repeating sequence.

Each generation is the expression of a single identity...

...which reproduces and expresses itself many times over time.

I'm just a link in a long invisible chain.

I was going through a period of doubt, as I was reaching my forties.

In this "midlife crisis" so beloved by women's magazines,

...the age where we're supposed to be a bit lost...

...which has been the case for all ages...

...that I've been through since I was born.

I thought back to my mystical revelation, and the long invisible chain.

My fear of becoming like my father, tormented me.

Maybe after all...

...these reels could teach me things about my ancestors and myself.

While taking inventory, I found 10 boxes labeled "Lucette".

"Lucette cabaret", "Lucette can-can", "Lucette birthday".

I was very fond of Aunt Lucette and I have fond memories of her.

She had bad reputation in the family.

I who only knew her late in her life...

...discovered amazing images of her in her youth.

At her death, Lucette left me an exercise book.

Inside, there was a badly-written

My little Andre

I have a feeling that you won't have an easy life like other people

You will find in this notebook notes that I made

Make good use of it. Maybe it will help you.

One day, no doubt, you will understand.

The notebook contained notes on family members and strangers.

Dates, names.

That of "Maurice Expedit" appeared all the time.

Rumors circulated about the number of mistresses that he had had...

...one of whom would've been Matisse's favourite model.

A true myth, the family figure of total success...

...being sole creator of the fortune from which his descendants benefited.

In fact, I didn't know anything of my family's history.

Just a few contradictory stories.

It was said that on the paternal side of the family...

...many were addicted to the bottle.

Others said that on the maternal side, we drank nothing but vintage wine.

Rumors, gossip, like in all family stories.

Thanks to Lucette's notebook and recovered reels...

...I might be able to piece together the lives of my forebears.

I could fill in the holes, from my collection...

...after all, family stories often look alike.

Might as well start at the beginning, with him by whom everything happened...

Maurice Expedit.

My great-great-grandfather, Maurice Expedit...

Wait, this isn't the right movie!

My great-great-grandfather, Maurice Expedit, was an engineer.

A patent holder, who had made his fortune

in the creation of machine-tools for manufacturers.

He was a friend of Louis and Auguste Lumiere of Lyon...

...who invited him to the presentation in Paris...

...of their new invention...

...in front of the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry.