Hypotypose

I discovered Le Dormeur du Val by Arthur Rimbaud through the voice of Serge Reggiani, who recited it before performing Le Déserteur by Boris Vian. That moment struck me deeply. The poem never left me. In just a few lines, it captures the absurdity of war: a peaceful landscape, a sleeping young man, and the brutal violence of his death, revealed in stark contrast.

I am profoundly anti-conflict. The wars we witness today, in Eastern Europe, the Near East, or elsewhere, deeply affect me. We speak of soldiers, but they are above all young people, offered up again and again. This tragic repetition is what I sought to convey in Hypotypose.

The film unfolds in two movements. The first is faithful to Rimbaud’s text, silent and contemplative. The second is freer, shifting in time, place, and political context, yet always linked by a single thread: war, and the sacrifice of new generations.

In this second part, the white flower evoked by Rimbaud, a funeral gladiolus, is stained with the blood of these young souls. The poem begins again, but never ends, carried by the relentless echoes of conflict. The cycle never stopped. It is still ongoing.

The symbol of the Ouroboros runs through the film. This serpent devouring its own tail represents, to me, the cycle of hatred, revenge, and the mistakes history repeats without end. I see it as a tool for reflection, a personal lens to understand how horror always returns, disguised as a new cause.
Hypotypose is a rhetorical device that makes a scene so vivid and detailed that it feels as though it is unfolding before our eyes. That principle guided me, to make the viewer feel, without having to explain.

When Rimbaud wrote Le Dormeur du Val, he was only sixteen. He came upon the body of a young soldier, not much older than himself, and saw his own image. It was the era of Impressionism, of light, stillness, and fleeting sensations. I wanted the film to reflect that, to become a gaze, a perception, almost a pictorial memory.

Hypotypose is not a fixed statement. It is a moving description, a poetic warning, a gesture of remembrance, a refusal to forget, where war seeks to erase.