After starting as an editor under the leadership of Eric Rohmer, then intense activity in the French avant-garde at the end of the 1960s, Jackie Raynal herself directed and / or interpreted a few films, such as the diptych “New York Story / Hotel New York ”(1981-1984), which could be linked to what is called autofiction in literature. We see the filmmaker-actress trying to find her marks by making her little Frenchy voice heard in the chatty and megalomaniac hubbub of the underground bohemian of the Big Apple. “New York Story” is a short film, almost all of which, roughly speaking, is recycled at the end of the medium-length “Hotel New York”. With only one major difference: its prologue, very different in tone, style and spirit. “Hotel New York”, less absurd, and in a more naturalistic and linear sense, recounts in the form of stylized sketches Jackie’s first steps in Manhattan, her precarious installation and her encounters with New York’s artistic fauna, particularly in the community. cinema, where she presents one film to one committee and tries to secure funding for another. She finds a producer, who falls right on time, and whom she marries immediately, for better or for worse (see the “fall”). Through these sketches both funny and flush with reality, Jackie Raynal finely translates the atmosphere of this period and the vagaries of his counter-culture. But a mystery remains: why is there no hotel in “Hotel New York”? On the other hand, there is one in “New York Story”: a four-minute prologue is indeed devoted to the Plaza, a famous palace fictitiously renamed Seaweed Hotel, and does not fail to be mesmerized by its madness; a kind of brilliantly wacky infomercial that extols the merits of this upscale establishment that has become a den of the bizarre secretly undermined by underwater and organic obsessions – a woolen blanket is cut which conceals blood vessels; porcelain crockery is broken because it is infested with sea fleas… This tongue-in-cheek and delirious tone, which brings to mind the Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin (or even his compatriot Cronenberg), is supported by a suave accompanying voice-over string shots punctuated by flawless editing. If this addendum contrasts sharply with the rest of the autobiographical chronicle, such a sprain is not unpleasant. On the contrary, it cheerfully spices up the New York stroll by bringing it a touch of surrealism.
“New-York Story / Hotel New York” by Jackie Raynal. United States, 1981-1984, 1 h 20
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