The French are at it again with a throwback to silent-film comedians
and favors physical stunts over dialogue to tell a surreal tale about a mental patient who believes she has the power to grant a lonely hotel clerk three wishes.
“Moviegoers today are used to seeing fast edits, but we show the full performance played out onscreen,” says Gordon, who plays the title character. “That famous scene in which Buster Keaton gets a building falling on him but manages to remain standing where the window was — that would lose all its charm if we didn’t see the whole context.”
Gordon met Laurel and Hardy fan Abel in 1980 when they studied physical performance techniques at Paris’ l’école Jacques Lecoq. The two later honed their comedic timing onstage.
“Experimenting in front of different audiences in different countries formed the base of our cinema work,” she says. “Our theater work helps us keep an eye out for
First in “The Artist” and now with “The Fairy,” French-language films are repurposing silent-movie traditions for contemporary audiences.
“The Fairy,” created by Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon Bruno Romy, that very fragile balance between the sublime and the ridiculous.”
Influenced by Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, “The Honeymooners,” Federico Fellini, Jacques Tati and early Woody Allen comedies, Gordon and her collaborators “try to write stories that are moving to us,” she says. “Then we leave as much space as possible for clowning around, hoping that the funny bits will come when we improvise the scenes.”
Gordon drew on her childhood to develop the fairy-tale concept.
“My parents worked in psychiatric hospitals, and when I was little, I met quite a few quirky characters who were too way out to be able to survive on their own,” she says. “Dominique, Bruno and I are attached to the outsiders of the world: losers, antiheros, clowns.”
Set in Le Havre, “The Fairy” frames outrageous fantasy sequences against the gritty backdrop of a working-class city.
“We’ve never been worried about the coherence between studio sets and real locations,” Gordon says. “We also have no problem mixing eccentric acting with naturalistic performance. If it looks right to us as we go along, we’re confident that it will be OK in the end.”
Unhurried pacing plays a key role in madcap “Fairy” stunts, chase scenes and underwaterballet sequences.
“When you line up the gags and don’t give the audience a chance to breathe, the laughter is not so satisfying,” Gordon says. “You consume the jokes without savoring them. The impression doesn’t last.”