VENICE 2023 Out of Competition
Review: On the Pulse
- VENICE 2023: Despite its many high-quality components, Alix Delaporte doesn’t pull off her portrayal of a group of international correspondents, on account of excessive goodwill
They definitely exist and they can recognise each other with ease. They always have very strong personalities, high on the adrenaline of the news and even the danger of conflict zones, but they also conceal deep wounds, fragilities which fuel their excesses and isolate them from the normality of everyday life. As a result, their private lives are often complicated and they like nothing more than the company of their colleagues, with whom they share solidarity on account of their familiarity with the reality of the world, and who most often aspire to denounce its flaws. We’re talking about international correspondents, and these are the people to whom French filmmaker Alix Delaporte tries to pay homage in her new film On the Pulse [+see also:
interview: Alix Delaporte
film profile], which was presented out of competition in the 80th Venice Film Festival.
It’s through the character of Gabrielle (Alice Isaaz), a young and highly resourceful country girl hired as an intern on impulse, that the director whisks us behind the scenes of the programme Reporters, overseen by Vincent (Roschdy Zem), who’s flanked by his team of seasoned journalists (notably the brilliant Pascale Arbillot, not to mention Jean-Charles Clichet and Vincent Elbaz). Whether it’s under-pressure public hospitals or secret operations by vegan commandos, civil war in Africa or embezzlement linking Parisian triads to council departments, the editorial staff are always on high alert ("it’s part of our job to think outside of the box"): reporters need to bring back photos, find sources, convince witnesses to talk, keep the right distance, get to the heart of the matter, not be walked all over by guests on talk shows… It’s a top-speed, wearing profession (how do you maintain a sense of vocation and motivation?) where you question things daily ("how do we convey the news and, most importantly, how do we withhold it"), sometimes ethics, and which is struggling with the pressure of ratings, the additional cost of foreign reports (accounting for broadcasters’ focus on French subjects, which places even greater pressure on rarer, international subjects) and the constraints that come with working within a group rather than as an independent company.
Alix Delaporte’s movie is a swan song, of sorts, dedicated to a style of investigative journalism which was remodelled by the audiovisual landscape a good ten years ago. Despite being very well acted and asking all the right questions around its subject, the filmmaker commits the venial sins of exaggeration (of the editorial team’s perpetual state of alert, for example) and, most importantly, excessive goodwill (a useless idyll, characters who are unavoidably archetypal, but a little too much so, a totally botched ending…). The filmmaker clearly wanted to reach for a wider audience after Angel & Tony [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and The Last Hammer Blow [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], but, sadly, she fails to sidestep format pitfalls which ultimately detract from a fascinating subject.
On the Pulse is produced by Trésor Films (France) and Artémis Production (Belgium), and is sold by Pyramide International.
(Translated from French)
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