37th edition
18-26 january 2025

Staying vertical

Rester vertical

Alain Guiraudie

Image Staying vertical
© Les Films Du Losange
France
2016 Fiction 1h38
OV without subtitles
Léo is searching for wolves on a plateau in the Lozère region when he meets a shepherdess called Marie. A few months later, they have a child. Suffering from post-natal depression, and with no faith in Léo, who comes and goes without warning, she abandons them both. Léo finds himself with a baby on his hands. It is not easy, but deep down he likes it. However, he doesn’t get much work and gradually sinks into poverty. His downward social mobility leads him back to the Lozère limestone plateaux and the wolf.
Screenplay : Alain Guiraudie
Cinematography : Claire Mathon
Sound : Philippe Grivel
Editing : Jean-Christophe Hym
Production : Les Films du Worso
Following on from L'Inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake) (2013) and Alain Guiraudie’s first novel (Ici commence la nuit, published by P.O.L in 2014), his latest film is a new departure, returning to the whimsical vein of his earlier digressive and pastoral films, while at the same time displaying a sort of thematic and cinematic gravity and serenity. Guiraudie’s alter ego this time is Léo (Damien Bonnard), an unattached writer-director in search of inspiration, an indecisive forty-something who is always putting off submitting his script just to get the advances from his producer. To prepare his new film (at least the pretext he gives himself), Léo wanders between the Lozère, the Poitevin marshes, the sheepfold, the causses, the wolf; between an exasperated producer and a nature therapist fairy in a hut deep in the woods; between the city of Brest and a house lost on a country road in which reside a foul- mouthed old man and his young guest, son or insolent lover. (...) While Rester vertical) (Staying Vertical) may leave the viewer with a few perplexing moments, due to its sinuosity and suspensions, Guiraudie has rediscovered a certain inventiveness, a freedom, a taste for research and ‘fugue’ with this film (...). (William Lurson; culturopoing.com)