Philippe, carré blanc… carré noir

‘Philippe, carré blanc… Carré noir’ is built along the thin line that separates reality from fiction; documentary from drama. Philippe, who also appears in L’Oeil et la Cage, is our guide in this descent into the world of drugs in Belgium at the beginning of the 1980’s, a subject Riga treats with extreme crudity and straightforwardness. All Philippe wanted was to kill whom he once was in order to give birth to someone new. He explains the beginning of his addiction as a quest for happiness. But pleasure would soon take over, every fix turning into a tiny dose of joy. Phillipe speaks of his relationship to death, of society’s rejection and of the overdose as the final mean to escape pain and manque.