Attack the sun

Can you give in to the sun without losing yourself? Can you long for it without getting burnt? We all know what happened to Icarus. Born and raised in Los Angeles, 25-year-old Steven Moran, the main character around which the whole film revolves, casts a different light on the question. His own sun is the haunting star of that global city, its hedonistic and heliophilous lifestyle, and their dazzling e ect. He basks in the post-adolescent fantasies – sex, cars, skateboards, beaches… – of that shining geography, which has obviously flooded so many films. How can one approach this matter anew, and squeeze every last drop if it? In an amazing feat, Gwendal Sartre (Song Song, FID 2012) and Fabien Zocco make the most of the local technological imagery, using an artificial intelligence program created by Fabien Zocco for the occasion to process information collected on the internet and on social media. The AI regurgitates the written voice-over of the character, and ends up infecting dialogues and situations imagined by Gwendal Sartre, as well as the very structure of the film. The result is a ventriloquial, rambling and contradictory film, constantly shaken up by the glossolalia of the character and by the unpredictable succession of sequences.
　　It shows the mirages of a deceitful city, trapped in its own mirror e ects, at once aloof and artificial, glittering with unattainable sparks. This frenzied and shattered narrative reflects what the character experiences – his constructions, his unfulfilled auto-eroticism, while he keeps filming himself, as if he wanted to step into the frame. It is a perfect match for the film, whose atmosphere is haunted by the delusive machine that is Los Angeles, always in Hollywood’s shadow, like the blinding reflection of a dazzling city. (N.F.)