Yves & Variation
2019 · 15m · United States
Directed by Lydia Cornett
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
New York doorman Yves Deshommes — also a violinist, art dealer, and philanthropist — shuttles between Manhattan and Haiti, where his art sales fund schools.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A doc about a guy juggling four identities sounds like the setup for a punchline, but Cornett resists the easy irony—instead she *believes* in Yves, which is almost radical in how unfashionable that restraint feels right now.
The film's formal architecture—cutting between Manhattan's glass and Haiti's ochre, between transaction and devotion—recalls the best of structural documentary, situating itself deliberately in a lineage of films that ask what it means to live between worlds.
The crucial move isn't the subject's four roles but the decision to hold on his hands while he plays violin: that single choice tells you everything about attention, craft, and why Cornett trusts the viewer to find the story in the gesture rather than in voiceover.
Reviews
By resisting narrative and going without interviews, Cornett allows the motifs of Deshommes's life to emerge amid its varied strands. It's a startling scene: practice is normally solitary and sequestered, but for Deshommes it becomes a public performance.