This movie shows the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo (whose virile stature recalls that of the male characters appearing in the painter's works), in full pursuit throughout Brasilia’s site under construction. As for the building of Orly’s West Wing, it opens Jacques Tati’s Playtime film (1967), and serves as a pivot to the plot of Vivre pour vivre (Live for Life) directed by Claude Lelouch in the same year. This last example provides Jacques Benoit one of the few literal quotations in his Orly (Sud) series : Yves Montand and Annie Girardot stand on either side of the painting, while silhouettes in the painting’s center evoke Montand’s infidelity sealing the end of their relationship. An iconographic construction that borrows from medieval art, a willingly anachronistic wink in this 1960s setting). This work particularly focuses on the interests of Henry Vicariot for new materials such as stainless steel and anodized aluminum, as well as the generalization of Neon -an element that Jacques Benoit takes advantage of, in order to emphasize this breakup scene’s icy mood.
This cinematographic dimension also allows us to better understand the unpredictable range of colors (to say the least), that this painter uses in his art. As a director of photography who would be given complete freedom, Benoit takes possession of the actors and props that he stages, imposing his own framings, his light, his own choice of colors. One can perceive the logic behind this explosion of highly saturated colors, like the reoccurring red skies, or the desire to create a strong contrast between realistic looking clothing and the characters’ wild skin color. Consciously or not, Jacques Benoit here refers to experiments conducted in 1964 by Henri-Georges Clouzot for his unfinished masterpiece L’enfer (Inferno) which includes several scenes where the actors (including Romy Schneider) were literally painted from head to toe to make them look the way Clouzot wished they would in his film.
Nurturing a genuine passion for architecture, Jacques Benoit nevertheless remains guided by Cinema.

Pierre-Yves Desaive - November 2011