« The very nature of the substitute is therefore double since it is a unique being with multiple facets, with multiple images and bodies. Verna is an image that replaces another image in a substitution film. And he plays all the roles. When he plays the role of the loved woman, he is also the one who loves. As a substitute, he loves a substitute, for a substitute love, reinforced by simulacra and parodical emotions and carried by the voices of the originals. In the close-ups, it is even more difficult to recognize or grant a status to this being. The disguised actor is hybrid, multiple and multiplied. In the moments of extreme disruption, when the mouth is only miming a Dreamland male or female voice, lost perception seeks a sign of recognition from this man who is no longer really man and who doesn't give the line to anyone - save for himself. The body double is self-engendering and zaps itself. It regur- gitates itself at the same time that it devours itself. Strangely disturbing, it transforms into the other while remaining the same. Through its function as substitute and a voice vessel, its only status in the film is that of image. If Verna claims to be a « tool » in the Dellsperger's film,

it is because he is not in action. Because he is a replicant with no will, he simply presents to us his body, from which all feeling has been drained, from which all pathos has been coldly pushed aside. Verna is a pit in which everything coils up, in which everything is integrated; through the play of mirrors, he watches himself in action, just as before every shot, he watches the model he is getting ready to reproduce. In the angle-reverse-angle shots, while he faces himself, he takes on the aspect of a twin who is already dead because of the editing and by eyeline matching. It is a hologram that is removed from space and time. It only exists in the instant. The disguises and the mirrors turn him into a perpetual reflection in the catoptric game of the film.»

Marie Canet, Posture and High Heels, traduction Molly Stevens, Edited by Toasting Press et Sternberg Press, 2011

http://chinese-girl-film.blogspot.com

Programme

Body double 22, Brice Dellsperger

2007, 37', video, col., son.