A director with an explosive filmography, Joël Séria is a marginal and cult figure in French cinema. Author of the sulphurous But do not deliver us from evil, he never ceased to play on the thin line between excess and realism. Very little focused on institutions (he scratched the clergy with as much malice and defiance as he refused to surrender to the Césars after the success of the Galettes de Pont-Aven), it is with a certain irony that he will be honored at the Cinémathèque française from June 27 to July 2; The opportunity to (re)discover colorful characters, like the director.
Often compared to Bertrand Blier because of the burlesque and extreme character of his characters, Séria has less of a taste for theatricality than for reality. Precise witness of a liberation of morals, that of the 70s, his films transpire love, sex but also a form of provocative innocence and poetic sensitivity. This impertinence is found in the young girls of Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal but also in the tirades Marielle (one of his most faithful collaborator with his wife Jeanne Goupil). One thinks of his contemplative celebrations of the female posteriors. But make no mistake. The woman is admired and put on a pedestal at Séria. Man is put back in his place and diminished, institutions scratched and human stupidity frowned upon.
Often reduced to a gritty cinema, the retrospective organized by the Cinémathèque is an opportunity to correct the common perception. By his own admission, Séria says he is " abandoned by cinema" and we readily believe him given the libertarian ideology he embodies. And that's why his films still resist the passage of time.
