“Journal de ma tête” is the first of four films in the “Ondes de choc” collection. Four Swiss directors (Ursula Meier, Frédéric Mermoud, Jean-Stéphane Bron and Lionel Baier) seized on various facts – a family drama, the destroyed life of a survivor of a serial killer, the massacre of the sect of ‘Order of the Solar Temple, a police hunt in the Alps – which took place in their country. Each film has a real fact as its starting point, and recounts, implicitly, the anxieties and traumas that run through Swiss society.
” Family I hate you “
Carried with sensitivity by the young Kacey Mottet Klein (Swann d’or of the male revelation for “Quand on a 17 ans” at the Cabourg Film Festival in 2016) whom Ursula Meier has been following for several years, and by an impeccable Fanny Ardant , “Journal de ma tête” could illustrate a hypothetical French baccalaureate subject: can literature have a responsibility in crime? “I have something to do, a terrible thing that will change my life”, writes Benjamin, 18, in the diary he sends to Esther Fontanel, his French teacher, before committing the irreparable. In cold blood, the uneventful high school student kills his father and mother in the family home before turning himself in to the police in a trance.
When the examining magistrate (Jean-Philippe Ecoffey) opens the envelope addressed to the teacher, he discovers a feverish prose which seems to respond with zeal to a request from his teacher: “Before taking action, I leave this diary of my head to your intelligence. » Did the words inspire the act or, on the contrary, did they hold it back until the dam gave way? The judge suspects Esther Fontanel of having encouraged the morbid outpouring of her student without reacting. She defends herself: “I’m not going to call the police every time a teenager writes ‘Family, I hate you’ in one of their texts! » In this film drawn to the line, Ursula Meier, convinced that literature does not kill, explores the derailments of the soul and plays with talent on the ambiguity of the student-teacher relationship.
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BA – Diary of my head
Thursday February 9 at 11:35 p.m. on Arte. Swiss TV film by Ursula Meier (2018). With Fanny Ardant, Kacey Mottet Klein. 1h10.
