“We should all lose our memory at least once in our life.” This is the mantra of Murielle Magellan’s film, The blank page, adaptation of the eponymous comic strip by Pénélope Bagieu and Boulet at the cinema this Wednesday, August 31. Sitting on a bench in the middle of a small Parisian square, Eloïse, interpreted by Sara Giraudeau, cries but does not know why. In fact, she doesn’t know anything anymore. Neither his name, nor his first name, nor the address of his apartment. The young woman suffers from retrograde amnesia: she has forgotten everything about her life until this realization.
As she no longer remembers, our heroine dreams and imagines her daily life before. On the screen all this happens in the form of a comic strip. As a tribute to the inspiration of the film. Eloise keeps inventing all sorts of scenarios. Arrived in front of her apartment doorstep, found thanks to the address on her identity card, she projects herself as the mother of several brats. It is not so. Instead, a pretty accommodation with old pink walls, full of details – a Causette magazine on the bedside table and the novel Thirst by Amélie Nothomb in the shelves – welcomes him.
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Empathy seizes the spectator who puts himself in the place of the character: if such a loss of memory happened to him, what would be his first reflexes? For Eloise, it’s about finding her payslips and the type of job she does, then searching her electronic devices. Difficult when you no longer remember the codes… The next day, strolling through the colorful streets of a springtime universe – the dream world generally offered by romantic comedies – she goes to a computer repairman, camped by Pierre Deladonchamps, totally perched geek.
He too looks like a big child: dressed in a t-shirt decorated with a portrait of a cocker spaniel, he jubilantly shows his “wheel of karma” to Eloise. The computer scientist spends his time looking at the ceiling, where he finds the answers to his questions and his problems. Still looking a little flabbergasted, Pierre Deladonchamps fits perfectly with Sara Giraudeau with her slender, youthful and playful voice. On the advice of a doctor – “live, love, make love!” – she looks for sensory stimuli to revive her memory. Even if it means becoming infatuated with a handsome man – Grégoire Ludig from the Palmashow – a bit silly, conquest of his past.
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Nothing, moreover, seems to connect her to her life before, since she does not understand what binds her to her friends from before: a malicious band devoid of finesse. Are her loved ones representative of the person she was before her amnesia? Under the light and humorous appearances, this romantic comedy triggers a reflection on what defines a person: his job, his friends, the books on his shelf?
Amnesia is experienced here as an investigation. In the shoes of a detective, Eloïse pins the evidence on the walls of her apartment: photos, comments… All linked by a red thread to find, not the culprit, but a mystery character, her. Little by little, the interest is no longer so much to retrace one’s past as to experience the present as a new beginning. Always in a happy way.
Some of the movements of the young woman are accelerated on jazz giving dynamism to the feature film, but also looks like cartoons. The impression is further reinforced by a splitscreen reminiscent of the panels of the comic strips of Pénélope Bagieu and Boulet. Creative, even if the feature film does not have the same charm as the graphic novel.
Eloïse reinvents herself, but she still has to elucidate the reasons for this sudden loss of memory: a painful family secret. The last scenes of the film are relocated, heading south-west, to Montauban, in a flowery and shimmering garden. The story ends with an expected but heartwarming happy ending. A bit perched.
Gender : Comedy, Romance
Director: Murielle Magellan
Country : France
Duration : 1h40
Exit : August 31, 2022
Distributer : SND
Summary: Eloise finds herself sitting alone on a Parisian bench. Who is she ? What is she doing there? She doesn’t remember anything! She then embarks on an investigation, full of surprises, to find out who she is. What if this amnesia allowed her to find who she is, who she loves, and to reinvent her life?