Sound And Vision: Pascal Laugier
In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we look at Mylène Farmer's City of Love, directed by Pascal Laugier.
If one thing connects the horror works of Pascal Laugier together, it is the idea of empathy as a monstrous force. That is a double-edged sword in this case, as it can mean both that his films have some empathy for the monsters, or that empathy itself is seen as monstrous. Spoilers from here on out, to be able to discuss this theme proper. Both forms of monstrous empathy are the case in Martyrs, in which the antagonists at the beginning turn out to be antiheroes, and the victims at the start turn out to be part of the true antagonists. Those true antagonists are a fascistic elite who as a means to understand the afterlife, torture innocent victims. Here their lack of empathy on the one hand, belies the fact that they want to have a deeper understanding of their victims in another way. Truly monstrous empathy. The victims themselves evolve into monstrous looking figures, therefore turning our natural feelings of sympathy (and innate distrust of the monstrous-looking other) topsy-turvy.
The Tall Man pushes this even further: here, empathy for children in abusive families turns into a monster itself. The Tall Man from the title is a fictitious figure that only exists to shield an operation in which children are kidnapped from abusive families, and placed into well-off families, to be able to break the cycle of abuse and poverty. That this form of empathy might itself not be in the best interests of the children is a thing the film acknowledges, as does the fact that there needs to be a monster to blame in any case.
Ghostland even goes further in the idea that monsterhood and victimhood are intertwined, searching for the reason we tell horror stories, and finding it in trauma. Here fiction is a form of escape and retread, to be able to cope with the darkness of the world. The monstrous empathy here lies in the fact that the monster stories turn out to be an escape from true horrors. That this is turned on his head several times throughout the movie, and that here the victims themselves are painted, as always, in shades of gray, makes the film even stronger.
But what has that to do with the music video, as Sound and Vision is ostensibly a column about how the music videos of a director fit with their output of films? Well, Pascal Laugier only made one music video, and it is all about the empathy for the monster, and the empathy of the monster. And just like his movies proper, it is full of mirroring images, in which the monster is reflected in the human and the human is reflected in the monster.
Laugier, once upon a time, was attached to a Hellraiser remake, and the music video for Mylène Farmer's City of Love proves he would've been a great fit. Mylene Farmer herself stars as a monstrous figure that is part cenobite, part Guillermo Del Toro-protagonist-like monster. She is a bird-like creature, walking through the house, witnessing the humans who once lived there through their belongings. Some of which are film reels, some of which are pictures. And one of which is a big faceless mannequin, on which Farmer projects a feeling of mirroring (read: empathy), seeing in this faceless husk something like themselves. It's the monster anthropomorphizing something that isn't human, proving she is all too human herself. Through the act of empathy, this monster proves they are not monstrous.
It is a sweet exploration of the themes that are always in Pascal Laugier's films themselves, playing around with the blurring of monster and human, darkness and lightness, empathy and horror, real life hurt and fictional horror. But here he does it in a much lighter way than in his features: if The Tall Man is his nordic noir, palatable for your parents, and Martyrs and Ghostland are the grimy fucked-up dark horror features you never would subject to anyone else, then City of Love is the family film. This is the one Pascal Laugier piece that got a quirky video-game-style sequel music video co-starring Shaggy (directed by Derek James Breflow). You can't say that of Martyrs.
