Etienne's grandmother gives him a video camera for his seventeenth birthday. Right away he takes to it, trying the whistles and bells, zooming in on his mother's face, urging her not to pose. Etienne's story is all about distances, intimacy, alliances. At the beginning, the subjects of his video-biography (his mother, grandmother, best friend, teacher) are flattered, self-conscious. Gradually they become annoyed, then barely tolerant, and finally, subdued.
From the moment he starts shooting, he gets bolder and bolder, asking personal questions, spying, catching his mother in her skivvies. Some of this we can chalk up to adolescent mischief, curiosity, lack of respect for privacy. What therapists call boundary issues. But by the final chapter, he is capturing incidents far better left off-camera. Which is, of course, what makes for good cinema.
My Life on Ice (originally titled Ma vraie vie à Rouen or The True Story of My Life in Rouen) is the directing project of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau and a very risky concept: to create a video journal that feels and looks as if there were actually a 17-year-old boy at the helm. The trick is to evoke randomness that is not random, armed with the knowledge that the most casual camera-wielding tourist will pick and choose what to photograph, consciously or not.
This was for Ducastel and Martineau a formidable accomplishment. Our understanding of Etienne is deepened by what he "mindlessly" chooses to document. My Life on Ice has the feel of home movies. The exchanges seem spontaneous, the action meandering, sometimes we come in on the middle of a conversation, yet the narrative, Etienne's despair and urgency, come through.
Much of what we see is what you'd expect. Etienne tapes his ice-skating practice and tournaments, nightclubs, classes, parties, visits to his father's grave, dangerous and evanescent cliffs that parallel his precarious manhood and sexuality. But it all adds something, the framing (say, the space left when Ludo (Lucas Bonnifait) abandons Etienne) the colors, the backdrops, look like the work of an amateur but enrich the tapestry.
Even when Etienne picks subjects that are grossly inappropriate, it fits his character, demonstrates his intense need to be included, to connect. The camera, neutral and persistent, enables him to grapple with hidden emotions because he is merely the transcriber. It transforms moral ambiguity into voyeurism. He can pretend it is someone else's life he is witnessing.
My Life on Ice explores Etienne's need to form loving attachments with other men, including Laurent, the geography teacher who is also dating his mother (Ariane Ascaride). Etienne spends a lot of time tracking him from a safe distance, and moving closer in as Laurent becomes a member of the family. Etienne (like all teenage boys) is a hormone case, but Ducastel and Martineau do not take this lightly or as occasion to humiliate him. He never sticks his penis in an apple pie or a hole in the locker room shower.
They are not shy, however about exploring his frank sexual attraction to his mother's boyfriend. And vice-versa. In one scene where Etienne is watching Laurent (Jonathan Zaccai) sleep, they pose him like one of Balthus' prepubescent hotties, legs splayed provocatively. In another, Laurent drunkenly flirts with Etienne, unnerved when he senses how seriously he is being taken. Like The Last Picture Show and For a Lost Soldier, My Life on Ice examines this behavior without condemning or condoning it. I think it's safe to say Etienne is not the last teenager who will be attracted to an older man. The casual tone that pervades the piece only makes these sorts of revelations more startling, more difficult to take.
Jimmy Tavares, who plays Etienne, is exquisite and poised. He has a mature handsome face that belies his insecurity and need to keep his emotions in check. Like the others, Etienne is uncomfortable when someone turns the camera on him. There is a profound anguish threatening to show in his face, whether he is copping to a smile or looking blankly into the lens, with no words to ease his pain. We can still tell he feels lost. Empty. The beauty of My Life on Ice is in its subtlety. Like the other components (dialogue, milieu, lighting, composition) the acting is appropriately off-hand.
Special note should be taken of the cast, who must act as if nothing extraordinary is happening, while imbuing their parts with resonance and dimension. Their characters' awareness of Etienne's camera makes them guarded and very difficult to play, but the ensemble comes through with aplomb. Ariane Ascaride, as Etienne's mother, is impressive, striking a delicate balance between indulgence and exasperation, turning in a performance with fine shades of mood and demeanor.