"What would I find if I opened it?” – “What do you expect to find?" The duo Maxime Matray and Alexia Walther previously proved their ingenious singularity in Venice back in 2018 with their eccentric road movie Blonde Animals [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], and fans of double-meaning riddles will be anything but disappointed by the filmmakers’ incredibly astute second feature, Affection Affection, which was unveiled in the Locarno Film Festival’s Filmmakers of the Present line-up.

"There are signs that don’t lie", "accept the world beyond all appearances", "the oath of fire", the energy of stones (but when you lift them up, you might find worms), the "descent of light into shadows to redeem them"… Some very strange ideas punctuate the wanderings of the film’s protagonist, Géraldine (Agathe Bonitzer), contrasting with the incredibly ordinary physical environment of this little town on the Côte d’Azur, which is somewhat depopulated since it threw on its winter coat.

Pragmatic and Cartesian, this young forty-something who’s the head of the town’s public spaces is faced with two mysterious and nigh-on simultaneous disappearances (that of her teenage stepdaughter Kenza and the latter’s father, Jérôme – played by Christophe Paou –, who’s Géraldine’s partner and the local mayor), and a no-less stupefying reappearance (that of her mother Rita - Nathalie Richard – who left 17 years earlier to live in Thailand). Other events include a statue thrown into a swimming pool, the explosion of a mine dating back to the Second World War, a small white dog who’s also vanished into thin air, and the resurfacing of the troubling case of Kenza’s mother who drowned some time previously.

It's in this context that Géraldine (named in honour of Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald) decides to lead her own investigation, travelling down all possible routes over the space of a few days in a small world akin to an island, where everyone has known one another for ages (but where every current or past word or gesture can cause misunderstandings) and which is shrouded in an atmosphere wavering between finitude and hope for rebirth …

Working with incredibly limited means, the two filmmakers excel at making the most of what’s at hand – the local geography in this instance (the beach, villas with sea views, the port, short-cuts running along tennis courts, etc.) - to tell an intriguing story that’s particularly well scripted despite its faux-casual appearance. Full of comical moments with its succession of misleading clues, Affection affection exudes a highly pleasing cinematographic air which differs from the usual standards, at once naturalistic (but not psychological), novelistic (yet anchored in reality) and playful (with a zest of the genre film but with no shortage of sensibility). It’s a highly personal cocktail which is charming for its apparent modesty, like a love letter in an open envelope or an offbeat poem from the modern world, as emphasised by the key reference to TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men: we wake alone at the hour when we’re trembling with tenderness.

Affection Affection was produced by Ecce Films, who are also managing world sales.