Induction

Main Entry: in· duc· tion
1 a: the act or process of inducting (as into office) b: an initial experience: 2 a (1): inference of a generalized conclusion from particular instances -- compare 3: a preface, prologue, or introductory scene especially of an early English play 4 a: the act of bringing forward or adducing (as facts or particulars) (Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary)

In a remote, design-packed villa surrounded by labyrinthine gardens, woods and meadows, there is an unexpected meeting between a marabout or dervish, a woman and a young man barely out of boyhood. Their paths will cross, then they slip away from each other in a labyrinthine world of impenetrable mystery. Provost, just like his alter ego the marabout, plays tricks on us, manipulating time and narrative logic, delivering shock while underlining illusion, finally leaving the viewer with an unfathomable enigma.

Smoke comes out of bushes or, inversely, retreats back into them; sheep, filmed upside down, run backwards; mouths filmed in close-up talk to themselves, whisper unrecognisable sentences in French, gape in secret astonishment. The black marabout, dressed in traditional dress or naked, apparently being in two places simultaneously, both inside and outside the house, seems to be the pivot around which the film swirls: he’s a killer, he has the (cinematic) power to freeze people, but he is also the film’s dark seducer and lover.

After magnifying suffering (e.g. in Exoticore and Papillon d’amour) or revealing wonder in Oh Dear, Provost dives into a world of anxiety and strangeness, questioning our fears of – and hidden desire for – the invader, plunging us into the heart of a new emotional experience. Induction is based on contrasts: the grotesque against the beautiful, the rough against the pure. Filmic conventions and rules are negotiable; only beauty and love for the image remain intact.

Produced by Versus Production with the support of Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Communauté française de Belgique and of Télédistributeurs wallons.

Distribution: Versus Production.