JOURNAL DE FRANCE (DOCUMENTARY) - Review by Joe Calleri.

What – JOURNAL DE FRANCE (DOCUMENTARY) – As Part of the 2013 French Film Festival

Reviewer - Joe Calleri
Stars – TWO AND A HALF.

Full Disclosure - I watched a DVD version of this documentary provided to me by the event publicist for the French Film Festival.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that, photographers rarely make for interesting documentary subject matter. A case in point is the rather frustrating and for me, ultimately unsatisfying documentary, Journal de France, which while intended to be a tribute to legendary French photojournalist and documentary film-maker, and full member of the world renowned, Magnum photo agency, Raymond Depardon, suffers from a lack of a clear direction.

I left this documentary feeling confused regarding its intention – was it meant to be a travelogue, or a review of Depardon’s many documentary films? If the latter, then I admit to being watching with some fascination the excerpts from several of Depardon’s documentary films made in 1960’s hot spots in Venezuela, the Central African Republic, and the West Bank, and then a colour film shot in Chad in 1975. Shooting images of conflict, death and destruction demonstrates to me that, Depardon must have had steely nerves. Yet, the documentary fails to explore Depardon’s psychological make-up.

Despite its 100-plus-minute running time, we learn very little about Depardon the man, and his motivations for being a photographer and documentary film-maker. For that information, I referred back to a short, 12-minute segment on Depardon’s photography as part of the excellent French DVD documentary series “Contacts Collection”, which concentrated on Depardon’s reportage of Italian insane asylums, of which Depardon said: “I like to watch, to wander, to close my eyes in the act of voyeurism. The photographer is a voyeur…who looks at what he doesn’t want to see.”

Then, there is Depardon himself. He is not particularly engaging. He is a quiet, solitary individual, who has obviously been traumatised by his experiences as a conflict reporter, hence his desire to drive alone in a van from one destination in France to another to take just one image with his large format view camera - no blasting away at subjects at six frames a second on high tech digital SLR’s for Monsieur Depardon.

But, remarkably and inexplicably, we learn nothing regarding Depardon’s photographic or creative processes (besides his stated desire for his images of French towns and farm houses, to be devoid of any signs of human or animal life), and briefly see only two images taken by Depardon – one from his Italian asylum series, the other a large-scale image of a French farm house.

And, the monotonous narration provided by Depardon’s long-time partner and collaborator, Claudine Nougaret, fails to elicit any sense of excitement or wonder.

This lengthy documentary should appeal to either very patient, die-hard fans of Depardon’s photography and documentary film-making, or to viewers unfamiliar with Depardon, but nevertheless interested in watching clips from beautifully shot documentary films of some critical moments in French and world history.