Justine Pluvinage

Justine Pluvinage does not reveal any secrets or extract any confessions. She makes no attempt to expose the deep, hidden truths of those she observes. After all, we only film stories.
When the director decided to shoot, the script had already been written. She steps in to direct the story of Coralie and Mourad, her neighbours. Their love story is one that they have mastered, one that they have often rehearsed and rewritten over the years. The chronology has been revised, cuts have been made, every hesitation has been tried out, and the twists and turns have been chosen. By themselves, of course, over the years. In the style of a genre film.
To all of us who are tellers of love stories, Justine Pluvinage offers, simply and lightly, the technical trappings of fiction. The backward tracking shot, the voice-overs, and the film grain envelop the narrative, the better to suggest that each story, on closer inspection, is worthy of the best romantic comedies.
The blur between documentary and fiction pervades the artist’s work. In each of her films, the stories intertwine, refusing to untangle themselves, and we never know what is real. The real itself is woven from a multitude of reassembled fictions.

Text by Samy Lagrange, researcher, art critic and independent curator, member of the Jeunes Critiques d’Art collective