Le Je d'Échec

In Le Je d’Echec, the details are what holds everything together, every shot, sound effect, play of light and mouvement, are serving a complex narration, as visual as it is poetic, which brings us in a uniquely captivating atmosphere at the image of its protagonist. This film invites us to let ourselves be hypnotized by its hybrid timeless feel, entirely shot inside, depicting the portrait of a fractured identity and the questions that come with it, a subject too often swept under the rug.

Leaning on the symbolism and structure of the game of chess, this piece plays with all tools cinema can offer, all of its « possibilities converted into power » as Deleuze put it, to offer a generous and artistic approach to its subject, and a complex sensorial experience. Form and content are linked to mirror the mental journey of this woman, who won’t hesitate to confront her darkest demons, to write them, interpret them, question them, and brings us with her in this internal puzzle, where each pawn, each move are as much keys to access acceptance and liberation of a mental state, again, much too often judged and minimized in a society that leaves little space to psychological differences and the misunderstood.

Here, those themes are exploited at their climax and in their depth, with honesty and poetry, back and forth, to draw the complete and complexe portrait of a woman questioning her I, in the light of her triggers, in the shade of her game.

  • Philomène Amougou
    Director
  • Pauline Raybaud
    Director
  • Pauline Raybaud
    Writer
  • Pauline Raybaud
    Producer
  • Philomène Amougou
    Producer
  • Pauline Raybaud
    Key Cast
  • Philomene Amougou
    Key Cast
  • Quentin Charpin
    Film Score
    Yesbill
  • Philomène Amougou
    DOP
  • Pauline Raybaud
    Sound Design
  • Jonas Lorentzen
    Vocalist
  • Philomène Amougou
    Editors
  • Pauline Raybaud
    Editors
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Le Je d'Échec
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    31 minutes 2 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    500 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Belgium
  • Country of Filming:
    Belgium
  • Language:
    English, French
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Philomène Amougou, Pauline Raybaud

Pauline and Philomène is a collaborative duo working along Paris, London and Ghent's art world.

Pauline Raybaud is a hybrid artist, actress and filmmaker. Her work explores the notions of identity, femininity, mythology and temporality. She uses various narrative tools to compose her stories, either through the use of language and poetics, or through the body and performance.

Philomène Amougou is a multitalented artist focusing on the dialogue between art and film direction. Her practice encompasses many mediums such as installation, set design, filmmaking, and even sculpture and painting to create unique 'mise en scenes' where her stories can take place.

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Director Statement

This film is born within a very fast imaginary story created on set of the movie (shot in 4 days), knowing we would have one main character embracing various roles in a closed-up set, and that we wanted to express the waves of questioning that come with any fractured identity.

Soon the game of chess became the major metaphor of the movie, along the main staircase that reflected the ups and downs of the protagonist’s mental journey. Being only two on set, the collaboration merged between us. Alongside the pawn metaphor for the different characters being embraced, a doubled persona was created, like another voice trying to bring the main protagonist to face and accept her mental reality, to look for her own truth in « the theatre of life ».

Later during the montage, we decided to emphase this mental puzzling by playing even more with the structure of chess composition, adding to it a deeply worked out film score and sound design in collaboration with Quentin Charpin.
The whole movie was created as a labyrinth and sensorial experience, inspired by Kinetic New Wave experimental films, in its aesthetics as well as narration process. Inspired by the structures of Robbe-Grillet and the depths of Lynch’s narratives, we want to bring the viewer’s senses along with the performance and poetics, to make him physically merge in the paste of this hybrid genre.

The verbal narrative was constructed in the same spirit, like a writer trying to control and analyse his narration whilst writing it. By using English as the major voice, intercut by French when words are lacking, we mirror these hesitations within oneself, while the game of chess inevitably unfolds, keeping the viewer in the same participative state as the protagonist.

The narrative has thus a deconstructed tone to it, but it all comes back as a loop at the end: she surrenders to her multitude. She is both the watcher and being watched, being the protagonist and the one thinking of it from another perspective. Imagining, being on a departing train watching the opposite direction getting further away, while seeing herself still waiting on the platfrom. Or did she actually stay there, and watched the train leave?

There is no right or wrong in this story, no definite answer nor end: it is all about letting the game be, and accepting where it brings us, who it reveals us. And accepting that a game has a start, and always an end: being is finitude.