Using a strategy for her story similar to those used by Bertolt Brecht, Dania Reymond makes use of her camera to concentrate on the development of the actual image. The history of cinema is punctuated with several occurrences of the story of Joan of Arc and this tale seems to now be part of our mythology. Jean Renoir encouraged directors to «plagiarise» so that they might explicit their choices regarding common themes.
Apparently going further by using the minutes of the trial as a text, in this the film aligns itself with the one by Robert Bresson. It would seem that the lively rhythm of the editing by Bresson contrasts with the search of form in the image of Dania Reymond. In this way the accent is put on the slow decline of the character of Joan in the way the camera treatment gives us an almost more immediate access than that offered by the dialogues from the minutes of the trial. The successive shots show Joan sliding into her own frame, that of the image, of the virgin canvas. From the close-up on her face to the shot where it looks as if she is tied up in her sheet like a patient in a camisole, the camera highlights the real attempt to assimilate the place. The questioning of the space between form and background creates the heart and the force of the film. When Joan asks the nurse if she thinks that the pill in her hand is the body of Christ, it is the equivalent as asking if she thinks she really is Joan of Arc. In depicting the story of Joan without retreating into a representation of myths and clichés, she gives her back a colour which imposes itself. It is the character and not what we generally think we know about her that tries to find its place in this cold, white universe. A universe which takes on the effect of projection, itself requisitioned by the dichotomy between the actor and her role, the latter offering Joan the depth which no longer exists in the myths.
_Quentin Conrate
