À coup de couteau denté
2012 · 11m · France
Directed by Clément Decaudin
Genres: documentary, musical
Tones: contemplative, tense
Shot in sober fixed frames during a creative residency and two concerts, this documentary follows the noise duo Pneu as it composes and performs its brutal, artisanal sound, building toward a trance-like release of tension and energy.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A noise duo as subject matter should be a gift, but Decaudin plays it almost reverently straight—fixed frames, no formal provocation, just letting the brutality speak for itself. It's the kind of restraint that feels safe, even when the content screams otherwise.
Decaudin's commitment to the fixed frame as a discipline—letting composition and duration do the work rather than chase the music—situates this within a rigorous documentary lineage, one aware of its distance from its subject and unafraid of that formal tension. The trance-like arc toward release is earned through editing patience, not manipulation.
The choice to hold static frames while Pneu's sound builds is the entire film: it forces the viewer into the band's own temporal logic, makes you *feel* trapped in the frame until the music demands rupture. That single formal restraint is what transforms observation into something you have to survive.
Reviews
C'est en prenant le parti d'un dispositif filmique sobre, une succession de plans fixes sur les musiciens, que le réalisateur plonge le spectateur dans une immersion totale. Un court moment de tension et d'énergie où la transe n'est pas loin.