In His Own Image movie storyline. Fragments of the life of Antonia, a young photographer for a local newspaper in Corsica. Her commitment, her friends, and her loves intertwine with the major political events of the island, from the 1980s to the dawn of the 21st century. It is the fresco of a generation.
In His Own Image (French: À son image) is a French drama film by Thierry de Peretti. The film, starring Clara-Maria Laredo, Marc-Antonu Mozziconacci, Louis Starace and Barbara Sbraggia, is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Jérôme Ferrari and premiered in May 2024 at the Cannes International Film Festival.
The film is loosely based on the novel À son image by Jérôme Ferrari, which was published in 2019 in a German translation by Christian Ruzicska under the title After his image. The novel tells the story of Antonia, who got into a car in the summer of 2003 and committed suicide on a road in Corsica.
She was 38 years old and a photographer. Her body will be laid out in her home village. The long Catholic funeral mass, presided over by her godfather as priest, is an opportunity to remember who she was. Its sequence, in which the priest strictly adheres to the rules of the liturgy despite his grief, corresponds to the twelve chapters of the novel, which tell of Antonia’s life.
The intimate bond between photography and death runs through the entire novel. Each chapter is preceded by a caption, but without a print of the associated, partly fictitious photographs by Antonia. Another part consists of real photographs by two war photographers, which, as he explains in the afterword, inspired Ferrari to write his story.
Film Review for In His Own Image
“How do you tell the story of war? Through what channels? Is there an airlock?” After A Violent Life [+], appreciated at the Critics’ Week in 2017, Thierry de Peretti decided to take on the history of Corsican nationalism at the end of the 20th century again with In His Own Image, unveiled at the 77th Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight.
But this time the subtle French filmmaker, who likes to play on the narrative boundary between on-screen and off-screen (because “certain things had to remain hidden”), has chosen a completely different and fascinating point of view, painting a portrait over almost 20 years of a ‘family’ of friendship and love through a romantic prism centred on the trajectory of a young photographer.
“Men have lived, but death came.” It all begins with a spectacular car accident, possibly a suicide, and a poignant wake attended by the relatives of the missing woman, the sunny Antonia (Clara-Maria Laredo). In voice-over, a narrator (who is not identified until much later in the film) tells the story of the young woman, a long narrative that is also indirectly that of the daily life of a group of pro-independence activists and their companions, their passions, their dilemmas and their heartbreaks. It’s a journey back in time that also captures the life of an island, its villages, its sea and its towns, this Corsican soul pierced by a mythology of weapons that drifts into a toxic cult of assassins who end up killing each other in the name of the same cause that is honourable on paper.
Antonia, on the other hand, just likes taking photos, but she’s 18 and she’s also very much in love with Pascal (Louis Starace) when he embarks, gun in hand, on the Bastelica-Fesch affair in January 1980 (a hostage operation that puts Ajaccio under siege). She becomes the wife of a political prisoner, just like her friends Madeleine (Barbara Sbraggia) and Laetitia (Saveria Giorgi), and over the next few years they are to live a strange existence, with arrests and the radicalisation of the FLNC (Corsican National Liberation Front), the murderous upheavals they witness without ever taking part, and which involve those closest to them: Simon (Marc-Antonu Mozziconacci), Jean-Joseph (Andrea Cossu) and Xavier (Pierre-Jean Straboni). Now a photographer with the Corse Matin agency, Antonia will soon have to choose what kind of life she wants, and how to exist on her own without denying her emotional ties.
Thierry de Peretti interweaves photographs, television archives and magnificent discussion sequences to create a lively mosaic, packed with information (including a symbolically illuminating but slightly less organic diversion into the Balkan war) and visually sophisticated (with Josée Deshaies directing the photography), without ever losing narrative fluidity (based on a screenplay he wrote with Jeanne Aptekman based on a novel by Jérôme Ferrari) or the essential human element. With In His Own Image, the filmmaker has created a remarkably balanced and intelligent film that blends the great and the small of history.
In His Own Image (2024)
A Son Image
Directed by: Thierry de Peretti
Starring: Clara-Maria Laredo, Marc-Antonu Mozziconacci, Louis Starace, Barbara Sbraggia, Saveria Giorgi, Andrea Cossu, Pierre-Jean Straboni, Alexis Manenti, Pierre-Jean Straboni
Screenplay by: Jeanne Aptekman, Jérôme Ferrari, Thierry de Peretti
Cinematography by: Josée Deshaies
Film Editing by: Lila Desiles, Marion Monnier
Art Direction by: Sarah Batard, Clara Georges Sartorio
Music by: Frédéric Junqua
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Pyramide Distribution (France)
Release Date: May 16, 2024 (Canes), September 4, 2024 (France)
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