A perfect nightmare for a requiem

Rating: 10/10 (19 January 2012)

A disturbing film, indeed. Very sad, very bleak, very real, very too much everything.
We all live on dreams but what happens when these dreams become addictions? We get off the road, jump from the tracks, derail and we lose our souls.
Every single type of addiction is studied or depicted here in their most stringent consequences.
First television. You can dream of being on television. This will never happen, and you know it, but you go on dreaming and you become addicted to that dream just as much as you are to the television itself. And then you start behaving as if you were a star gone berserk.
Second you can get addicted to slimming pills and in six months you become a zombie, the shadow of yourself, a non-entity, a guinea pig or guinea fowl if you prefer for doctors who are going to try all kinds of treatments not to cure you but to know what the effects of these treatments may be. You are an inmate in a hospital just like so many hundreds of thousands were inmates in Auschwitz.
Third you can get addicted to drugs and then you will end either with one arm off and crippled for life, if they let you go out of the prison that will stand behind, or directly in the prison dreaming this time of freedom, though you were dreaming of paradise when you were free and you were shooting yourself with all kinds of heart accelerants, shooting yourself in both feet.
Fourth you can get addicted to love in a way and a man in particular but, if you are, when that man will turn absent and non-existent any more you will be in a fix and you will have to replace him without being able to replace him. He will be your mental pimp and you will be his mental, but real indeed, shady lady or shady gentleman as for that, ready to do anything to get your fix, get some dough, maybe some baked dough, generally known as bread.
Fifth there is another addiction that is dreadful. The addiction to old age that makes you believe you are not old and makes you behave as if you were not, but you can't not be, so you start cheating with life, taking pills, sitting in the sunshine, visiting other isolated old people, chanting and dancing when your son comes visit you, even if it is to steal your TV to bring it to a pawnshop of your friends.
But the sixth and worst addiction of all is the addiction to solitude. That addiction can happen at any age, for any sex and in any circumstances. And don't believe it is because you live with someone, you share your daily life and chores with someone that you are not alone on this earth. Solitude is our daily lot and there is no fate in that. It is just a fact and you have to accept it. If by any chance you get addicted to that solitude, then your life is going to be hell on earth because everything, everyone is going to be a disruption, a disturbance, a dysfunctional item or individual or bore.
When you meet people who are living an addiction to anything, you sure are going to come across a very disagreeable and very unpleasant experience. Addiction is the other side of the moon, the moon of life, the other side of it you can never see really because you are dead to the world, reason, logic, simple sanity and insane people don't see anymore: they fantasize.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU