“God had to create disco music so I could be born and be successful” – Donna Summer.
“From children to men we cage ourselves in patterns to avoid facing new problems and possible failure; after a while men become bored because there are no new problems. Such is life under the fear of failure.”― Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man
D’entre les mort or The living and the dead. Disco and a short discussion of the film Tralala, French 2021 directed by Jean-Marie Larrieu & Arnaud Larrieu.
Stepping away from suffocation: a short discussion of the French film Tralala 2021. Disco! Disco in Lourdes, France.
First the music was intriguing as well as different: not quite a musical and more like a Hymn or meditation through music through life it breathes another dimension into the ordinary, a homeless man’s day and those he meets.
Tralala is a musical that is like clapping a beat, or adding boots and cats to rhyme and he takes this as his name. He, homeless. He lost. He like a dice roll drifts and finds something in the small and unseen in our lives we might usually overlook. Like vertigo, or a feeling of dizziness and disorientation. A song in the film D’entre les mort or often the English translation The Living and the Dead, a 1954 novel re-named Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock’s movie adapted from the French novel) directs me to this. Lourdes, the setting in France, is a place that orients pilgrims and disorients the disbelievers: can miracles happen? Have they happened? Why is the belief so strong and the community stands stable and solid in these beliefs. Tralala turns up in the town and disorients people. His appearance, like vertigo and like the song’s English title a life returned from the dead as well as breathing new life into the dead or forgotten relationships in the town. Who is Tralala?
Another dimension and I have the feeling of uncertainty with breathing and letting go. As an audience member I wasn’t prepared to take another’s perspective that like a bomb Tralala is the devils advocate. I didn’t want to determine my meaning, my attempt to connect with the film through with their stable stance. To suffocate; to accept their choices and their approach as the only way to feel this film wasn’t going to stop me breathing or giving it an organic life that evolved or appeared seen through different scenes something different and new.
In a way, borrowing from Dice Man, I questioned their habitual repetition to compete and interpret the whole before my own exploration or discussion. Determined to determine the spectator instead of accepting their perspective was unsure how to receive the film. I walked away from their perspective just like Tralala.. It felt right to let the film have an organic, fecund and less organized moment in my life. To breathe and not judge was what I was taking from Tralala. To feel less suffocated by the other’s perspective. Less dualist and less determined to simply place it in between a miracle and the devil I let go and breathed.
Uncertainty added dimension and took from the one who tried to destroy the film experience for me. Was this also part of Lourdes miracle or pilgrimage? I breathed and then submitted to the music. Woven through Tralala’s narrative was his perspective: song and music simply walked in him and exchanged with others as part of his day, his ontology. He connected through music and lived as his music. Homeless and facing problems as they unfolded. Disco erupted into this unfolding. Lourdes missed their disco and the family that ran it missed their son, Pat, 20 years gone and now Tralala walks in and they need to fill that gap, their loss with the appearance of who they believed was their lost son and brother, lover and father. Who was Tralala? He had no story in this film. He was presence. His history unknown.
Disco! SO many moments in this film was like vertigo without the anxiety – if possible. The extraordinary in the ordinary – the music we play as we walk around, listen to when we shop and share together as we love, laugh or leave plays a role more significant for the sensitive or interested than those deaf to the rhythms around us. The next generation, the sons who wanted to leave for Australia were still caught in their father’s loss or mourning his brother and his musical connection.
The loss and the new, rap or hip hop for another generation, was still mourned. The dance music and shared moves as well as light and pleasure was mourned. Where had disco gone for this generation and should older people feel shamed of their age and needs to express themselves through their generation, disco and dance? Unashamedly, I enjoyed the final scenes: dance and then songs sang by the “brother” Seb “D’entre les mort” is sang by the actor Bertand Belin. With Le mot juste, the hypnotic rhythms – percussion created a space to forget and to enjoy performing and the performance. The narrative again lost or wandered and music plays a role in the pilgrimage out of grief and into life.
I found in the film an encouragement, or going against the tide, for older people to dance for therapy, memory and improve quality of life. The intergenerational trauma that disrupted and disoriented the extended family from Pat’s disappearance to the sudden appearance of Tralala was like the lights on the disco ball in town, a removing of dust and spinning with the earth again. Without one meaning many worlds could world without holding onto an other through grief, dishonesty and regret. Tralala is not a musical and is not not one. The meaning for me is to sit again and listen to Bertrand Belin’s voice transport me somewhere else, unknown and unfamiliar with familiarity. Uncertainty unfolds for me as flexibility and opening to the voices of others: their daily hymns or values and meanings intertwining with my own.
(5) D’entre les morts – YouTube
Le mot juste (youtube.com)
Not the waltz, this is Disco!
© Cate Andrews, 2024.
Cate's Art and Film conversations 
You must be logged in to post a comment.