Venice 2023: Vivants
VENICEWithout sounding patronising to the reader, it’s quite hard to tell what Vivants is and wants to say. To put it simply, director Alix Delaporte feature is a drama that follows an intern into the world of visual journalism in a hand on news station. But go a bit deeper, and Vivants never gets out of first gear to explore or compose any further ideas aside from its basic inaugural inception.
It would seem surprising that with current world events – especially in France – that Vivants is so limp with its narrative and thematics. Instead of externally exploring wider themes and angles, it decides to internally explore the characters and workplace without any real information, engagement or immersion to follow. There are two elements here that keep Vivants from utterly imploding into nothingness: the first is how it’s shot and the second is the central performance from Alice Isaaz.
To start with the former, Vivants utilises a constantly immersive degree of handheld camerawork that externally feels as if the feature is moving at all times and crafts an urgent immersion. Internally, it crafts a feeling of being one with the characters themselves and being apart of this core team. The problem is – much like the aforementioned issues – it never evolves to further demonstrate elevation to the feature itself. In the sentiment that it uses the same technique to get the same result no matter the scene, no matter the thematic, the audience are therefore watching the same visuals and tone being reintegrated without a sense of identity. Granted, that very aesthetic is not boring or dismally produced as the aesthetic is tightly shot and does craft tone.
That being said, looking further into Vivants’ core, the viewer can’t find or identify any significant layers to see evolution. The one thing that they can attach themselves to is lead actress Isaaz – who looks suspiciously like Euphoria actress Sydney Sweeney – who starts as an intern in this story. Wouldn’t the simple take away would be watching this character grow and evolve within this narrative to see where she goes? And while yes, this describes most simplistic of plots, it is exactly what the feature does without even a shred or intrigue or enthusiasm.
Alice Isaaz is undeniably the glue that holds this together, since she acts as the audiences eyes and ears and therefore starts on the same starting line as the audience, but the race they run is ever so awkward and uninteresting. Five or six character are then intertwined within the office space. Each with what is a problem upon themselves, such as wanting children, having children and not being with them, or being shot in a war zone. All equally credible in their own merits and have undoubtedly a certain degree of depth that is attached to them, but the execution here is ever so dull and feels inconsequential. The audience don’t care about the family hardships because they never see the true hardship of the job, as the feature doesn’t have intensity. They don’t care about a possible death in the field because no character development has been given to said arc and therefore the performance is resultantly flat. To put it simply: the viewer never gets a feel for the characters because the film never takes a moment to craft depth.
Arcs that feel so inconsequential and flat, with the sheer neglect to explore who these characters are, lead to the resulting feelings they convey leading to nothing. One such horrible neglect is, of course, lead actress Alice Isaaz, as the feature is baiting for the character to grow and evolve in what she’s seeing and feeling in this environment – inconsequential as it is – only to leas itself in a prism of faux thematic brooding in the last five minutes using an escaped zoo animal in the Paris streets. All while Alice Isaaz has propelled herself upon a structure to get the perfect image. An obvious but flat illusion to illicit the sentiment that she is now part of the team, yet has never deserved the material to begin with. Perhaps the sequence is to comment on the greater issue and perception of what is news, or to truly illicit the main character to find her place, who knows? As is, Vivants feels an eight hour tv series crammed into ninety minutes with the obvious awful result being a poorly conceived and concocted drama that doesn’t have the legs or means to showcase the true thematics it wants.
