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LE PAPIER NE PEUT PAS ENVELOPPER LA BRAISE
France - 2007 - Betacam. 90 min.
- Director:
- RITHY PANH
- Script: Rithy Panh.
Production: CDP, INA. - Section:
- AS - Asian Selection
- Screenings:
- Cines Aribau Club 2 - 28/04 - 20:00
- CCCB Auditori - 01/05 - 18:00
This film won the prize for the best documentary at last year’s European Film Awards. Panh paints a strong picture of the reality experienced by prostitutes in Cambodia. In the purest Tsai Ming Liang style, the film begins by observing the characters we will get to know later on, taking time to stop and look at each one. It does not judge them, it just makes the spectator watch them. It does not speak of sex until about ten minutes into the movie. The spectator is presented with apparently everyday scenes, such as one in which some prostitutes reckon up with their pimp the wages they are owed for the week, as though it were a perverse maths lesson. Or dialogues in which these women talk about the villages they come from and had to leave one day to start what was supposed to be a better life. They speak about abortion, drugs, death, AIDS, suicide. In short, the Cambodian director denounces the situation of these women who do not receive any kind of international aid. A documentary that leaves no room for hope, so much so that one of the women goes as far as to say, “Here you get AIDS and you die, and if you don’t, you die anyway”.
