FRANCE 2 – SUNDAY JANUARY 15 AT 1.15 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY MINISERIES
A frail silhouette crosses the snowy immensity, a huge telephoto lens under his arm, which almost throws him off balance with each step. “You have frozen eyelashessays a male voice, while Jérémie Villet’s childlike face appears, illuminated by large clear eyes. You are beautiful. » Indeed, despite the ambient −20°C, the young 29-year-old photographer radiates: he has been living off his passion, animal photography, for ten years now.
Another image enthusiast, journalist Laurent Delahousse had already received him in December 2020 for the release of First snow (Oak). Jérémie Villet returns this time in “13 h 15, le dimanche” as the hero of a miniseries whose four short episodes, broadcast in succession, each tell the story of a photo, and lead the viewer into an astonishing waking dream. .
white paradises the aptly named… The “trips” here are not chemical but caused by wild nature shots, “beautiful, hostile and at the same time incomprehensible”, says the one who has tried to transcribe it since childhood through his photos, in a quest for the absolute, for perfection.
So much so that he only keeps three or four a year – never retouched, he makes it a point of honor, barely cropped at times – out of the hundreds made during his three months of winter expeditions in Norway, Finland, Canada… Always alone. Until he agrees to leave exceptionally accompanied by director Marc de Langenhagen. This appears in The Arctic Fox (episode 1), which opens with the preparations on the Ile-de-France family farm.
Look for a sign of life
Very quickly, the singularity of the young man appears, both in the Yvelines and frozen beyond the polar circle. “Something might end up happening because we’ve been waiting a long time”, calmly assures Jérémie Villet. The spectator then finds himself scrutinizing the screen, in search of a black dot, a sign of life, of a photograph.
Each episode contains its own twists, which we won’t divulge here. Just can we indicate that the episode The Yukon Wolf (region located in Canada) is shot in… the alpine massif of Oisans (Isère), and that the designer Jean-Marc Rochette, “savage artist”, plays an essential role, since his charcoals will, under dictation, give life to the repressed memories of Jérémie Villet; that of the moment when, facing the animal, the “weird life” of the photographer has finally taken on meaning; and that of the next moment, of absolute sadness.
The other two episodes use fictional scenes. So in The deer of my childhood, which returns to the origin of the vocation of the photographer: the young actor Théophile Combe (perfect cast) interprets Jérémie there at 12 years old. Also in Rabbit Islandto give flesh to the meeting, in 2015, with Arthur, a romantic character with a destiny worthy of James Bond.
Six years later, back on this Norwegian island covered in mountain hares. Jérémie Villet is again “upset”he said, intoxicated: “I hesitated to live here, but I told myself that it’s something to end badly. If you live happily in a place like that, you end up alone and… you’re happy, but is that enough? No ? » This time again, Jérémie Villet has returned.
White paradises. The adventures of Jérémie Villet, Marc de Langenhagen, Yoann Périé and Guillaume Salasca. (Fri., 2022, 4 x 26 min).