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| Vincent Barré and Pierre Creton in A Prince |
Cast: Antoine Pirotte, Pierre Creton, Grégory Gadebois (voice), Vincent Barré, Mathieu Amalric (voice), Manon Schaap, Françoise Lebrun, Chiman Dangi, Pierre Barray, Yves Edouard, Maxime Savouray, Olivier Chaval, Evelyne Didi, Bruno Martin, Marie-Odile Daubeuf. Screenplay: Vincent Barré, Pierre Creton, Mathilde Girard, Cyril Neyrat. Cinematography: PIerre Creton, Léo Gil Mela, Antoine Pirotte. Film editing: Félix Rehm. Music: Jozef van Wissem.
At a key moment in Pierre Creton's A Prince, Antoine Pirotte, the actor playing Pierre-Joseph, gets out of the bed he's sharing with two other men and is replaced by the much-older director himself, who then assumes the role. The voiceover narrator simply notes that Pierre-Joseph had gotten older. It's clear at that point, if it hasn't been earlier, that the film is deeply rooted in Creton's own experiences, dreams, desires, and vision. So much so, in fact, that it almost becomes a barrier between the viewer and the film, disarming even critical responses to something so personal and idiosyncratic. Some critics, for example, took Creton to task for the "orientalism" of the character Kutta (Chiman Dangi), an Indian, the titular prince, who is viewed as an exotic creature, culminating in a startling nude scene near the end of the film. But it's clear that the Kutta of the film is a reflection of Pierre-Joseph's -- and by extension Creton's -- own imaginings. Similarly, critics objected to the heavy use of voiceover narration, whereas I think Creton resorts to it as a way of suggesting that we all turn the past into stories in our head. This is all to say that I found A Prince fascinating but often opaque, a tantalizing but inaccessible attempt at autobiographical fiction.
