CORPS/VETEMENT

of DELOEUIL Christian

FRANCE, 1985, 00:20:00

Production : DELOEUIL Christian
Genre : Documentary, Creative documentary
Keyword : Fashion, Society

Summary :
Each section lasts 6’30’’.

LA ROBE IMPER is the first part of a trilogy called CORPS/VETEMENT, which also includes MYTHING and VIDEO STRIP. All three films were shot between 1983 and1985. The french expression « déshabiller du regard » (to undress with the eye) is taken literally. The clothes are the obstacle between the eye and the body. They are the link between the two, a sort of compulsory passage that is dictated by the social rules.

MYTHING : our eyes always have a great number of bodies to look at. They allow themselves to be caught by them. The more the clothes are beautiful and the more they play hide-and-seek with the bodies, the more the eye is caught. Our eyes indulge in that game of picturing, beyond or through an elusive body, what is most powerful in it : its nakedness.

VIDEO STRIP doesn’t tell a story. It is simply about a body that separates from its clothes – or is it the reverse ? – and disappears as mysteriously as it had appeared. The clothes are the only thing left at the end, as if they were substitutes for the body. Their crumpling is the evidence that somebody wore them. They are the signs of a moulting, of the transmutation of a female body into nothing. (Christian DELOEUIL)

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