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ON VOIT MIDI A SA PORTE

Text quoted from: http://www.cannes-fest.com/2001/film_quelleheure.htm( 30 Jul.2001)

"On ne doit pas tuer un être vivant pendant 49 jours..."

Certes, ce dernier opus de TML, est symboliquement et cinématographiquement moins fort que The Hole, par exemple. Cependant, ce qu'il perd en originalité, il le gagne en charme et en rythme. Le tempo* est d'ailleurs primoridal sur ce film qui scrute le temps qui passe. Mais pas seulement. Obsédé par ses thèmes - la promiscuité, l'incommunicabilité, la solitude - le cinéaste made in Taiwan continue son observation des grandes villes, des petits appartements, de ces cases à urnes funéraires qui se superposent, de ces gens qui s'entassent dans le métro. Cette mythologie urbaine peuplée de cafards et remplie* de poubelles, rend l'espace exigu et opressant. Tout débute avec un long plan séquence sur un vieux monsieur; il sera le souvenir qui soutient l'intrigue. Il est seul, face à une mort dont on porte le deuil - décidément l'obsession de l'année. Cela n'empêche pas TML de placer des notes d'humour, des absurdités drôles, des petits détails inattendus, espiègles, qui nous font sursauter comme le carillon ponctue l'écoulement du temps à chaque heure. Dans cette longue insomnie avec décalage horaire, le réalisateur divise par chapitres* symétriques les trois destins qui se croisent* (la mère, l'expatriée, le fils) : ivresse, absence, sexualité, vol...
cette synchronicité tryptique des actes marque le poids de la chronologie tout au long du film. Le lien entre les deux célibataires est d'ailleurs symbolisé par l'heure et les horloges. TML va jusqu'au bout de ce délire allégorique en mettant Taiwan à l'heure de Paris. Paradoxalement, son héros va ainsi découvrir la France à travers un film et du vin tandis que la touriste aura le plus grand mal à s'intégrer, malgré une expérience vécue et non virtuelle. On appréciera l'hommage appuyé à Trufault*, liaison et lésion irréelles entre les deux êtres.
Cette oeuvre discrète n'en est pas moins attachante, comme les personnages, et notamment le toujours très beau Hsiao Kang. Le cadre et l'image sont splendides. Ce n'est pas les 400 coups. Mais ces 12 coups de minuit suffisent non pas à réveiller un mort, mais plutôt à nous maintenir éveillé devant tant de sensibilité, et de fatalité face à cette éternité interdite.

* The spelling of these words has been corrected from the original text

TIME AFTER TIME

"One shall not kill a living being for 49 days..."

Indeed, symbolically and cinematographically speaking, this last TML opus is not as intense as The Hole for instance. However, what is lost in originality is gained in charm and rhythm. The concept of tempo is all-important in this movie that scrutinizes the passing of time. But not only that. The "made in Taiwan" film maker is obsessed by his subjects (promiscuity, impossibility to communicate, loneliness) and keeps observing big cities, small apartments, cinerary urns piling up on top of one another and the subway crammed with people. This urban tale populated by cockroaches and full of garbage bins gives a tight and oppressing feeling to the surrounding space. It all starts with a long sequence showing an old man. His memory will sustain the plot. He is alone, faced with a death that is already being mourned - clearly this year's obsession. It doesn't keep TML from placing humoristic touches, amusing absurdities, small unexpected and mischievous details that surprise us as the toll marking the passing of time each hour. In this long insomnia with jetlag, the director divides the three crossing destinies of the mother, the expatriate and the son in symmetric chapters: drunkenness, absence, sexuality, theft...
This triple synchronicity of acts underlines the weight of chronology throughout the movie. As a matter of fact, time and clocks are the symbol of a link between the two unmarried characters. TML goes all the way in this allegoric delirium by setting Taiwan to Paris time. Paradoxically, his hero will then discover France through wine and a movie while the tourist will have a very hard time adapting, in spite of a live -and not virtual- experience. You will enjoy a tribute to Trufault, an unreal liaison and lesion between the two people.
This discrete work is nevertheless just as compelling as its characters, especially the always handsome Hsiao Kang. The setting and images are beautiful. This is not The 400 Blows, but though TML's 12 strokes of midnight do not to wake up the dead, they are sufficient to keep us awake before so much sensibility and fatality facing this forbidden eternity.

Discussion of terminology and resources used for this translation:

On voit Midi à sa porte http://french.about.com/homework/french/library/express/blex_proverb.htm ( 30 Jul. 2001)
This American site provides a list of English expressions with their French equivalents. The French expression "Chacun voit midi a sa porte" is translated by "To each his own". However, In our French text, this expression is mainly used because it refers to time, a key topic in the movie. This is why it seems more appropriate to keep the time reference with another English expression even if it is not semantically equivalent to the French expression originally used.

ce dernier opus
http://64.154.21.227/news2000/feb00/news50228.html ( 30 Jul. 2001), the ABC television news site uses the expression "the last opus" in a cultural context of advertising launch, which is very similar to our context.

urne funéraire: http://www.afif.asso.fr/francais/conseils/conseil41.html ( 30 Jul. 2001)
The "Association Française d'Information Funéraire" web site provides a lexicon of terms related to death and funerals along with their translations in English and German.
Reliability: "Les informations et les conseils sont donnés sous réserve d'erreur involontaire ou d'omission."

porte le deuil: see complete search here
On
http://www.dnd.ca/admfincs/subjects/qr_o/vol1/ch017_e.asp( 30 Jul. 2001) , a page of the Government of Canada Web site, we read "an officer or chief warrant officer shall wear mourning while taking part in service funerals" as a translation of "un officier ou adjudant-chef porte le deuil lorsqu'il participe à des funérailles". Therefore, "to wear mourning" seems to be an accurate and official translation of the French expression "porter le deuil". A search on "wear mourning" retrieves American and British sites using this expression. However, it seems to be used in a quite formal and official context, as opposed to "mourn", more commonly used in most situations. The syntactic form of the sentence to translate has to be considered too, as the two expressions are not equivalent: "to wear mourning" is a verb form, and "mourning" is a gerundive.
The actual expression used here is "porter le deuil de quelque chose" which is in fact translated in English by "to mourn something".


ivresse
On the Government of Canada web site http://www.dnd.ca/eng/archive/1999/aug99/11aug99CL1_n_e.htm ( 30 Jul. 2001) "ivresse" is tranlated by drunkenness, or impaired driving in the specific case of what would be "ivresse au volant" in French.
The more generic term "drunkenness" applies to our situation.

en mettant Taiwan à l'heure de Paris
On http://www.flyana.com/jetlag.html ( 30 Jul. 2001) we read "Set your watch to the local time" used in a general touristic context, and on http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu/2000-month-08/msg02601.html ( 30 Jul. 2001)we see "Setting the clock at boot time ... " used in a more technical computer science context.
A more thorough search on "set clock at" and "set clock to" retrieves several occurences of "set clock to" (e.g. http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/42282.shtml ( 1 Jul. 2001) or http://www.mitre.org/research/cots/TEST.html ( 30 Jul. 2001)) and none of "set time at". "Set time to" turns out to be more commonly used, and as the other expression appears in a technical context, it might be specific to the situation it was used in.

Paradoxallement
On http://www.climateark.org/articles/2000/4th/hotairba.htm ( 30 Jul. 2001), we can read in an article published in the British Newspaper The Guardian: "The hot air balloon: Paradoxically, such a failure of the climate change talks is the best chance to get the issue noticed..." which shows that "Paradoxically" is a correct translation for "Paradoxallement".

hommage appuyé:
The adjectives most commonly associated with tribute are: international, worldwide, unofficial, late, online, etc. but nothing really corresponds to "appuyé". It seems that in English, a tribute already conveys the notion of something important, and doesn't need an adjective to underline it. Therefore, "hommage appuyé" can be translated as "tribute"

lésion
http://eurodic.ip.lu/cgi-bin/edicbin/EuroDicWWW.pl ( 30 Jul. 2001)
lésion= lesion, overreaching
On English and American sites as well as on French sites, "lésion/lesion" is used as a medical term, and is accompanied by a specific jargon. In both languages, it implicitely refers to something that is "broken" or in bad condition, and can be kept in the translation to convey the same idea.

Les 400 coups
http://www.art2u.com/movies/Truffaut.html *( 30 Jul. 2001) Shows that the title of Trufault's movie "Les 400 coups" has been translated in English as "The 400 Blows"
It is therefore difficult to keep the play on words "400 coups/12 coups de minuit" as English has a different translation for each case (blow/strike).

* The name of the film maker is not spelled correctly on this site, but I kept the mistake to make it possible to copy and paste the link.


July 2001