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Three years after the publication of Marguerite Duras’ children’s book Ah! Ernesto, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet pull the titular protagonist from its pages for an unconventional retelling of the short story. In their black-and-white stylistic experiment, nine-year-old Ernesto declares that he no longer wants to go to school, to the dismay of his parents and the school principal. His reasoning? He only learns things there that he doesn’t know. For Straub and Huillet, young Ernesto’s truancy is a vehicle for challenging the convention of translating literature to cinema.
Although the two filmmakers stay true to Duras’ original words, they deprioritise plot and suspense to give centre stage to emotions, or rather the lack thereof. Straub and Huillet strip their actors of all of this and let them perform almost out of boredom: their tone of voice is atonal, and facial expressions are non-existent. As a result of this, Ernesto himself seems possessed by a self-assured arrogance.
Straub and Huillet reinforce this deliberate discomfort in their cinematography and editing, starting and ending their shots too early or too late, which emphasises exaggerated physical gestures. In everything they do, the duo seeks an alternative route to convey Duras’ plot to the viewer.
Bio Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet
Filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet made two dozen films between 1963 and 2006. Their films are noted for their rigorous, intellectually stimulating style and radical, communist politics. Though both were French, they worked mostly in Germany and Italy. Straub and Huillet were inseparable partners from 1954 until Huillet’s death, working intimately on every aspect of film production.