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FESTIVALS Belgium

At Namur, the besotted bodies of Cages

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Selected for official competition at the RomeFilmFest, Cages [+see also:
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, the debut feature by Olivier Masset-Depasse, first pays a visit to the Namur Francophone Film Festival. On the set of his film where we met him, Masset-Depasse told Cineuropa that he hoped to make a more optimistic film than his shorts (see interview).

With Cages, he has succeeded in doing just that. The film stars two mind-blowing actors: Sagamore Stévenin (see interview), who brings the film an energy that is both wild and tender, and Anne Coesens, who radiates onscreen, lending a bare and vulnerable face to the camera.

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Eve is totally besotted with a man whom she can no longer tell she loves since an accident that literally left her speechless. Powerless, she sees Damien, worn out, distance himself. As a last resort, she tries to seduce him in an attempt to win him back.

Constantly focusing on Eve, Masset-Depasse depicts this love story as a lively and nervous thriller, as well as a work of ample lyricism and melodrama. Along with animal figures (stuffed animals, heads of wolves or fur coats), it follows the path of these amorous passions, between an ochre interior and a white exterior, from possession to emancipation.

With humour and great skill, Cages is more of a mosaic than a straight line, blurring the sequence of events, playing with the division between tones and universes (touches of the burlesque, absurd and poetic representations, moments bordering on the nightmarish), at the risk of sometimes being anecdotal. But the film is never more successful then when it links each lover irreparably to the other in the same frame and never more fair then when it captures through a confrontation the complexity of their relationship.

Produced by Versus Production with RTBF and Scope Invest, Cages is a co-production between French outfit Les Films Pelléas and Mobilis Productions, and was supported by the French Community of Belgium.

Distributed in Belgium by Cinéart, Films Distribution is handling the film’s international sales.

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(Translated from French)

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