Letter from Dinard 2: “The Gallery”, interactive thriller

The further the second millennium advances, the more it blurs the boundaries between cinema, series and video games. Who will be able to determine to which audiovisual family “The Gallery” belongs? One thing is certain, Paul Raschid, a 29-year-old London filmmaker, has proposed the most curious object in the 33rd British Film Festival .

Vine

First part: in 1981, Morgan (Anna Popplewell), a London gallery owner, finds herself taken hostage by Dorian (George Blagden), an unknown painter. Under Morgan’s chair, he placed a bomb. He begins to paint his portrait.

Second part: in 2021, the story repeats itself but the roles are reversed. This time, Morgan (George Blagden) is a man and Dorian (Anna Popplewell) a woman.

From this double plot, the show will take place both in the room and on the screen. Every 5 minutes or so, the image freezes and viewers are faced with choices. Will the character scream? Or try to run away? Will he face his captor? Or will he try to appease him by flattering him? In the dark, spectators brandish small fluorescent sticks and vote for this or that option. Thus, the story progresses, over the choices, like a creeper.

The diabolical trick

“The Gallery” therefore advances in fits and starts, according to a jerky tempo. It obeys a writing that is both spectacular in its breadth and simplistic in nature. Indeed, in each sequence, characters and spectators are confronted with two or three options. However in life, as in the most beautiful fictions, the choices turn out to be larger and more disturbing. There are many nuances, an infinity of possibilities that shape a story. “The Gallery” only invents a binary world, inevitably frustrating.

Paul Raschid gets away with a diabolical trick and a brilliant acting duo that complicates his project. The female Dorian of 2021 is not the male Dorian of 1981. She is a more devious character, more violent too. If the spectator is confronted with the same choices in the two parts, the consequences of his votes are not the same in the two periods.

fairground attraction

“The Gallery” will mostly be seen alone, on the platforms. However, it wins to be broadcast in theaters, as Dinard dares to offer it in French preview. Suddenly, the cinema returns to its origins as a fairground attraction. Above all, this collective experience invites us to reconsider this strange and elusive monster: “the public”.

During the first game, the fluorescent sticks rose mainly for the least reasonable choices. The fate of the characters, the survival of the hostage, was less important to the room than its need for action and twists. The story of 1981 ended badly. When the 2021 installment came, Dinard seemed to want to redeem himself and write Morgan a happier fate. Yet, invariably, the hostage’s journey leads to the same dramatic epilogue.

According to Paul Raschid, “The Gallery” has 18 possible endings in the 650 pages of its screenplay. Therefore, how to understand that we come twice in a row to the same outcome? Indoors, “The Gallery” becomes a disturbing sociological experience.

puppet democracy

“The Gallery” was produced in the wake of “ Black Mirror: Bandersnatch “, interactive experience put online by Netflix in 2018. Further back we can go back to “Smoking / No Smoking” by Alain Resnais where, from the same starting point, the story took various directions. Resnais, unlike Paul Raschid, did not get his spectators to vote… and that didn’t change anything.

The vote is indeed only an artifice. In the end, Paul Raschid pulls the strings of his story alone. His film is no different from the first and distant attempt at “interactive cinema”.

In 1967 the Czechoslovakian director Raduz Cincera unveiled his “Kinautomat” at the Universal Exhibition in Montreal. This funny film was interrupted regularly while the author went on stage to offer the spectators to vote according to different options. However, the votes led systematically… to the same events! Thus the “Kinautomat” denounced puppet democracies and rigged elections. It was naturally banned in Czechoslovakia.

Since the fall of the wall, technology has evolved towards ever more immersion and interactivity. However, those sticks that we brandish frantically on the night of “The Gallery” still shine like an illusion of democracy. Even in a free world, the director remains forever a despot.