“A brief but memorable glimpse into the mind of a filmmaker simply trying to make sense of modern life in her own bespoke manner.”
In a discussion as part of her masterclass at the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival, Céline Sciamma expressed her profound belief that “editing is the pure poetry of cinema”. A simple but provocative assertion that helps to add context to so much of her incredible work, especially in how it sheds light on her process of making films, from the germination of an idea to the final touches, each moment being an essential step to realising her deeper vision. As part of a fascinating conversation about her process, the audience was privileged to see the international debut of her short film Tutti Frutti, developed as part of the Où en êtes-vous? project, an initiative started in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in which filmmakers (established names and newcomers alike) are invited to interpret the open-ended and provocative question “where are you now?” into a series of short films, whether essay, documentary or narrative. In many ways, Tutti Frutti is the rare kind of film that qualifies under all three categories, which is precisely the approach we would expect from a filmmaker who has taken a monumental turn into more experimental work, where the borders of the medium have become increasingly and gloriously undefined. Filmed over the course of a few years, it finds Sciamma turning the camera on the one subject that has been present in all of her films to an extent, but never the primary focus: herself. In Tutti Frutti, the director becomes the protagonist of her own story, starting with an account of her day-to-day life, trying to find meaning and poetry in the most mundane activities – looking out a window, lying down, walking through city streets (in addition to the various actors and other figures who appear, we find that Rome, Venice and Paris are also credited as part of the cast) or simply existing in a particular place and time, coalescing into an indescribably captivating artistic curio that is both intimate and expansive in scope.
As remarkable as it can be to see Sciamma speak about the film in detail, adding a lot of context to certain decisions that went into its development, Tutti Frutti is also a work of art that is able to stand independently, since the director is evidently someone who allows the sounds and images to speak for themselves. The experience is as much in the hands of the audience as of the creator herself, resulting in a fascinating dynamic in which Sciamma slowly punctures the membrane that divides the artist and their audience through redefining how a seemingly simple story can be told on screen. Some of the footage assembled over the years was designed specifically for this project (particularly the latter portions, where it takes on an unexpected form, distorting the lines between documentary and fiction); other portions are just fragments of life that she intended to use as inspiration for future work, but which found their way into this film through the process of intense artistic reflection, a cinematic scrapbook of small ideas rendered as something much more profound. The film is structured as a visual diary, with Sciamma providing narration that adds meaning to the often-abstract images we see on screen, allowing them to be viewed as more complex than they appear on the surface, while also opening the possibility of diverse interpretations from each viewer. As the audience, we are invited to engage with these images and sounds (all of which were constructed by the director herself, who shot and edited the entire film over time, much of the narrative emerging in the editing room) in our own way, a peculiar but very effective approach for something so intensely personal, contributing to the communal nature of this film, which uses an unconventional structure to create something genuinely engrossing. This gives us a brief but memorable glimpse into the mind of a filmmaker simply trying to make sense of modern life in her own bespoke manner, each moment adding a stimulating new layer to the ongoing conversation about the narrow boundaries between fiction and reality.
To understand the many complex nuances of this film we simply need to look at the title, with Tutti Frutti having many meanings to the director: it’s a playful phrase that is fun to say, and has an evocative quality and a cultural resonance that extends far beyond the specific confines of what we see in the film. Sciamma is not solely presenting a portrait of herself, but rather holding a mirror to the rest of the world, acknowledging her position as one of the billions of people who are all existing at the same time, interpreting a confusing world in our own individual way and making sense of the astonishing chaos that is modern existence. Sciamma constantly returns to the key question that guides this film, asking herself “where are you now?”. This started as the act of just piecing together fragments of her daily life, with particular focus on those moments that exist within the margins and are not normally reflected on screen, before gradually becoming more complex in its underlying themes, many of which remain vague throughout and are never resolved but instead simmer in that rare artistic ambiguity that doesn’t confuse the viewer so much as it motivates us to look deeper at the ideas that inform each moment. Tutti Frutti is the cinematic journal of a filmmaker reflecting on her craft by placing herself in the protagonist’s role, blurring the lines between a curator of the craft and an active participant in it from both sides of the camera. It is also about identity (with Sciamma consistently foregrounding conversations around femininity and queerness as the conceptual anchors) and society, all of which come together to form a riveting and enticing existential odyssey. Throughout all of this, the director remains steadfast in her undying curiosity, excavating the various layers of her environment (both physical and psychological) in pursuit of a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive in the modern world, as well as the one to come.
Tutti Frutti is impossible to even begin categorising, let alone trying to understand where it fits into both Sciamma’s oeuvre and the ongoing movement towards a more self-aware, confessional style of filmmaking. Perhaps the best way to approach this film and what it represents is through evoking one of the director’s forerunners and clear inspirations, Agnès Varda; she defined her process of “cinécriture” as a kind of filmmaking that exists as a relationship between the director and both the images they capture and the sounds that accompany them, moving between genres and styles in order to extract the most meaning while also placing the work in the hands of the audience, who are given the chance to interpret it on their own terms. Somehow, Tutti Frutti exists at the perfect intersection between a deeply personal essay film in which the director places herself at the centre (without making it biographical in any distinct way) and a provocative call to arms for contemporary artists to push the boundaries of their given medium, finding the singular vision in every work. It’s an astonishing and daring piece of cinema that is difficult to define by design, an absolutely ingenious work that sets out to unravel the many layers of the human condition, curated by a filmmaker who is determined to redefine the craft in her own way. The structure of Tutti Frutti provides a mosaic of small, independent moments that coalesce into something much deeper and more profound once we begin to piece together the underlying ideas that inspired its creation. It leads to a fascinating experiment that moves in several different directions, but where each one ultimately has the same destination, functioning as a broad, complex tapestry of the mind of an artist trying to make sense of the past, present and future. All of them are condensed into this masterful artistic endeavour that feels both deeply personal and universal, as it examines the inner depths of modern life and the unknowable complexity of the future, in terms of both artistry and existence as a whole.