On connaît la chanson (Das Leben ist ein Chanson)

A tribute to Dennis Potter, who explored the transformative power of musicals in Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective. Veteran director Alain Resnais uses Potter's strategies to lend a surreal twist to an elegant comedy about relationship problems, real estate and class differences: in the middle of their dialogues, the actors suddenly begin singing popular songs that comment on their mood in a variety of ways. At first, city commander Choltitz refuses to carry out Hitler's order to destroy Paris, preferring to sing Josephine Baker's ‘J'ai deux amours’. Subsequently, in the present day, there are historically less significant but nonetheless breathtaking overlaps between topography and emotion, until jellyfish inexplicably drift across the screen and, in a cathartic moment, Jane Birkin's ‘real’ and ‘artificial’ voices merge into one. (C.H.) The fact that opera houses in capital cities have a similar architectural status to parliaments, courthouses and stock exchanges shows that there is more substance to the utopia and heterotopia of opera for human societies and their public sphere than we think. (C.S.)