Suburbia, There and Back

A portrait of the Parisian suburbs, which, from wooded fringes to urban, industrial and commercial zones, reveals these territories in their banality and their poetry, caught in the daily movement of workers and commercial flows bound for Paris.

The opening shot of Suburbia, There and Back shows a gradual emergence, a revelation that gives way to a reversal: that of the horizon. Here, the horizon is Paris, the capital. This is not a destination or direction, rather a rare perspective observed from its so-called suburbs, the usual horizon of the big city, a territory that is normally only seen from afar. Take a different view, follow the path, listen carefully to what is not looked at, is what the film seeks to do, patiently, so that this Parisian suburb can tell its story, distant fields on the periphery of the inner suburbs. Places where the workings of time can be seen, places that seem reluctant to be viewed as a commuter town or on the sidelines. And you need time to see. The film operates on appearances and disappearances: a harvester churns up dust and obscures the image; a car runs over a tin can ejecting it from the frame; the painted lettering of a wall sign has been fading for years. Some disappearances take their time, like old buildings being replaced by new builds – the urban is being renovated, developed, as they say. Others appear through sound like the birds that we had forgotten to listen to when planes and cars were not saturating the audio track. The film creates its own layers of sounds, spaces, and digs down into private spheres, even into the homes of the inhabitants who, when outside, also cross though, pass by, watch. Between the interior shots and landscape shots, the scale changes, but the feeling or approach seems the same. We settle into each shot, sometimes long enough for several timeframes to coexist. Here time accumulates and, to inhabit a place, you need long stretches of time.

Clémence Arrivé Guezengar