Nicolas Philibert closes his moving trilogy on psychiatry with an informal tour of patients

After On the AdamantThen Averroes and Rosa ParksNicolas Philibert opens with this third part of his trilogy on psychiatry the intimate space of patients, in “their home”. The Typewriter and other sources of hassle releases in theaters on April 17, 2024.

The film opens in the apartment of Patrice, a patient already met on Adamant. Every day he was seen sitting at the same table on the barge and beginning to write a poem in Alexandrines. One per day. We find him at his home. He’s a little panicked. His typewriter broke down. Walid and Goulven, two caregivers, came to his aid to help him repair it.

We then enter the intimate space of other patients, confronted with the same kind of small domestic worries. The handy caregivers will help Muriel, who has a problem with her CD player, Yvan and Gad for the roommate’s printer, or even Frédéric, who must be accompanied to sort through his apartment, saturated with books, magazines, vinyls, comics, or even his abundant works, which abound.

“A pretext to get news”

The idea for this third part took root while Nicolas Philibert was filming On the Adamant. Learning that a small group of a few handy caregivers, called “the orchestra”, regularly goes to this or that patient facing a domestic problem, he decides to follow them with his camera.

“They take a toolbox and try to help the person repair what needs to be repaired. We understand that it is at the same time a pretext to get news and to help the person find a little momentum, basically”, confided the documentary maker to franceinfo during the release ofAverroes and Rosa Parks in a long interview.

“It hits the head, the silence. When you are alone, you think about death. About the black death, not the white one”, explains Muriel, that the breakdown of her CD player plunged her into anxiety. She is happy to receive people, to offer coffee, to share this little moment with her guests.

We also learn a lot about Frédéric, upon entering his lair, a beautiful shambles, as much media library, library, art gallery as music room. A place steeped in history and culture, and also inhabited by all its unique personality, in which you have to zigzag to get around.

Frédéric takes the opportunity to show his childhood toys, which he has kept, and also his works, large colorful paintings, and even his records. A whole world, with landslides. When Jean Cocteau collapses, we take “L’Odyssey to stall”. “I put him in his place, he was a little intrusive”says Frédéric, a touch of humor always lurking behind his cinematic voice.

“A human psychiatry”

Going ever closer, Nicolas Philibert opens up for us with this new part another space, intimate this time, in which something other than what we had been able to see and hear on the Adamant, or in the hospital, is revealed, in interviews with caregivers.

This tour completes the trilogy, which from the Adamant to the interiors of the patients, via the hospital, familiarized us with their madness and with the complex world of psychiatry. This new part also offers another look at the caregivers, filmed here outside the hospital setting, so human, so delicate, so attentive to breaking the isolation of patients, to repairing objects as well as souls.

With The Typewriter and other sources of hassleNicolas Philibert therefore highlights another aspect of this “human psychiatry, which still largely relies on speech” And “who considers that medication is not enough”. Here, in the intimate space, the power of words is at stake more than elsewhere, and the benefits of a language full of double meanings, of metaphors, of words which allow patients to express their joys, their anxieties and their suffering, and for caregivers to hear them in a shared moment.

The filmmaker, both discreet and present, lets what happens happen without disturbing, as he knows how to do so well. Thus, this trilogy closes on a striking proximity with human beings of rare sensitivity, who, over the course of the three films, have become like relatives who remind us of our own humanity, friends that we find difficult to say. to leave.

The sheet

Gender : Ddocumentary
Director: Nicolas Philibert
With : Patrice d’Hont, Walid Benziane, Goulven Cancouët, Muriel Thouron, Jérôme Délia, Ivan Vdovine, Gad Abécassis, Frédéric Prieur, Bruno Voillot, Céline Fogler
Country : France
Duration : 1h12
Exit : April 17, 2024
Distributer : Losange Films

Synopsis : Final part of the triptych initiated with On the Adamant Then Averroes & Rosa Parks, the film continues its dive into the central Paris psychiatric center. Here, the filmmaker accompanies handy caregivers to the homes of a few patients who are suddenly helpless when faced with a domestic problem, a broken appliance, etc.