Et j'aime à la fureur (Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By). 2021. France. Written and directed by André Bonzel. With Bonzel, Anna Bonzel, Raymond Expedit-Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde. Music by Benjamin Biolay. New York premiere. DCP. Courtesy Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 96 min.
From André Bonzel, co-director of the audacious Man Bites Dog (1992), comes this haunting meditation on love, memory, and the tactile power of cinema. Bonzel draws from a vast archive of amateur films—scenes of courtship, marriage, and domestic life captured on Super 8, 9.5mm, and 16mm between the 1920s and 1970s by ordinary people. These flickering fragments of forgotten romances are woven together into a bittersweet reflection on the ephemeral nature of both love and celluloid. In restoring and reanimating these intimate moments, Bonzel creates not just a history of amateur filmmaking but a deeply moving exploration of how we preserve—or attempt to preserve—the most precious moments of our lives.