My films have always represented a balancing act between those films whose objective is the discourse, the concept, and those which start from the material, from emotions, behaviour and locations," says Alain Tanner, Fourbi's director. "I felt that the current prevailing stagnation demanded that I turn the sand clock I felt that I had to return to the discourse approach, which I had not used for some time."
In his 19th feature, the 66-year Swiss filmmaker whose Les années lumieres (Light Years Away) won the Jury Grand Prix at Cannes in 1980, resurrects the character of Rosemonde from his 1971 hit La salamandre (The Salamander). That film which shot Bulle Ogier and Swiss cinema to international attention, was about a young girl who acting in self-defense, kills a man who is trying to rape her.
Fourbi's starting point is eight years down the line after Rosemonde decides to make a little money from the incident, by selling the rights for her story to a large television channel trying to boost its ratings by films on violence and crime. Although she has been paid up-front, she suddenly bottles out and refuses to recount her experiences. The scriptwriter, the producer and the actress chosen to play her, all attempt to coax the story out of her creating a fourbi - an organised chaos - but their efforts are fruitless.
"The film is not a remake, rather the idea was to take the same point of departure and adjust the story to the circumstances we encounter today," says Tanner. "Most of my reflections on my work naturally centre around the audiovisual media. You could say that in this field things have both changed and remained the same. What lingers on is the justified desire to give an account of the lives of people who do not actually have a story to tell."
Jorn Rossing Jensen
Prod Co: Filmograph (Geneva), Noe Productions (Paris)
Prod/Dir/Scr: Alain Tanner
Ph: Denis Jutzeler
Prod Des: Ivan Niclass
Mus: Michel Wintsch
Ed: Monica Goux
Cast: Karin Viard, Jean-Wuentin Chatelain, Cécile Tanner, Antoine Basler, Robert Bouvier
Running time: 114mins
Int Sales: World Sales Christa Saredi
