SYNOPSIS

October 1937. With his glory days behind him, Vander Clyde, a forty-year-old American trapeze artist, performs in a small travelling circus in France. Under the big top, he transforms into a gracious woman: Barbette, his other self. But every night he can feel his aging body failing him a little more. Since giving up the show would sentence Barbette to death, Vander tirelessly keeps climbing on the trapeze, ignoring the danger. As a wounded animal that knows its end is near, he’s rushing towards his own fall.

INTENTION

As I discovered Barbette through Jean Cocteau’s essays, I felt a growing sense of injustice. How could this flamboyant artist who caused so much ink to flow a century ago, be forgotten so quickly? Why is he not present in our collective memory? I am driven by a strong desire to rehabilitate Barbette, to put him center stage once more. I see him as an Icarus of modern times, a fallen angel, a woman doomed to dance every night over the abyss in order to go on living.

I want to film this subversive creature in the duality of contrasted black and white in homage to the photographs of Man Ray. Far from his glorious past, in the intimacy of a circus caravan, I want to portray him as a desperate character stuck inside a damaged body, knowing that the fall is close, inevitable.

With this historical story, I want to question modern times. While the issue of gender is more visible than ever, a man who goes out dressed as a woman today still risks a beating. A century after Barbette, drag artists may seem to be the queens of our decade, but all too often only when they are safely confined on a cabaret stage.