11/04/2023 - In his chiaroscuro film starring Noémie Merlant and Benjamin Voisin, André Téchiné explores a close sister-brother relationship amidst amnesia, trauma and medical care

"We can’t pretend you didn’t exist before this." Much like the lost memory of one of the two main protagonists in his new film Soul Mates [+see also:
trailer
film profile], released in French cinemas on 12 April by Ad Vitam, André Téchiné is a filmmaker who chooses to manoeuvre on the frontiers between worlds, where reality encourages secrets instinctively buried in the past and in oblivion to rise to the surface. Ghosts which characters are more or less oblivious to, weigh on the present, complicating decisions over the future, gnawing away at searches for self, and stirring up existential tensions where life and death instincts, nature and society, fight for supremacy. These incredibly wide-ranging subjects are often tackled by the director through the prism of family relationships, a crucible in which attractions and conflicts are exacerbated.

"It’s our valley – I don’t recognise any of it". David (Benjamin Voisin) is returning home after several months spent in hospital. His life as a soldier imploded in Mali, but now he’s back from the land of the dead after lingering in the limbo of a coma and slowly reconstructing his body (namely learning to talk and walk again). Unfortunately, he’s suffering from dissociative amnesia and so his sister Jeanne (Noémie Merlant) takes him into her care in their family home nestled in the remote wilds of the Pyrenean foothills. Loving and attentive, she sets herself the task of reawakening his memories, whilst also serving as his nurse and treating his severe burns. The seasons pass and David wavers between a state of uncertain agitation and frustration, between returning to his former life (his interest in nature, his love of motorbikes) and coming to terms with the somewhat unlikeable stranger he once was, or giving into the temptation to lose and totally reinvent himself through this new beginning. Jeanne, meanwhile, must deal with other dilemmas arising from their life as a pair; namely the desire she feels, in the shadow of her brother, to live her own life…

Should we save others or ourselves? Protect others or our own interests? Embedding his story within a crepuscular atmosphere after an incredible, nigh-on documentarian hospital-focused first half, André Téchiné subtly infuses tension through the realism of daily rural life (the depressed, misanthropic neighbour played by André Marcon, the mayoress with an eye on the future played by Audrey Dana…). The air of an ending hovers over the film which unveils its truth in a home straight, inverting values and offering wonderful (and somewhat challenging) roles to the highly versatile Noémie Merlant and the lively Benjamin Voisin. Slowly drilling down into material which some might consider to be disturbing psychoanalytical obsessions, Soul Mates acts as a troubling mirror for Paul Eluard’s poem which we hear in the film: "On hope without memories, I write your name, And by the strength of one word, I start over my life. I was born to know you, To name you Liberty." And liberty is never straightforward.

Soul Mates is produced by Curiosa Films in co-production with Arte France Cinéma, Legato Films, HBB 26 and Ad Vitam. World sales are entrusted to Playtime.

(Translated from French)