“Else”: a stunning first film that evokes Cocteau and Lynch

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Multi-card . There are few who, like Thibault Emin, a filmmaker trained at Femis, work in the science fiction genre. A 2008 graduate of the university course in filmmaking, he has since honed his craft in various key positions (assistant director, screenwriter, videographer and even actor). A version based on an eponymous short program filmed after his studies, "Else" imagines, more than ten years before the Covid-19 crisis, a futuristic society grappling with a strange pandemic that manifests itself through a fusion of bodies with the elements that surround them.

Lynch emulator . The film, shot with a rigorous economy of means, demonstrates an inventive technique that is, to say the least, astonishing in terms of special effects, concocted like a master by Thibault Emin alone. Taking the era by surprise, this maverick favors a clever mesh of physical materials and fabrics over digital tricks. The result is disturbing and sensual images that evoke as much the poetic resourcefulness of a Mario Bava as the science of the bizarre of a David Lynch – "Else" also resembles a colorful and carnal grandnephew of "Eraserhead", a reference claimed by the filmmaker who nevertheless does not crush it.

A disciple of Cocteau , Thibault Emin thus traces a remarkable path through the landscape of French cinema. Not only does "Else" impose a new production model, close in its conception to contemporary art – where the director composes his images with his own hands – but he also revives a certain poetic conception of the genre, thereby drawing closer to Cocteau.