If it Were Love

Patric Chiha

IndieLisboa 2020 •

France, Documentary, 2020, 82′

Fifteen dancers tour the piece Crowd by the choreographer Gisèle Vienne. The stage is a dance floor, in homage to the 90’s raves. Erotic impulses, random encounters, love in super slow motion. The director documents their work, but suddenly dance falls into cinema’s creative pit. And the boundaries – between bodies, relationships, stage and reality – become more and more fluid, in this journey through love, dance and the night. 

—

If it Were Love is not just an exceptional opportunity, for those who missed it in Lisbon, to get to know the work of choreographer Gisèle Vienne in Crowd. Perhaps it is even more valuable as a thorough revisiting of its characters and movements, in a brilliant system built by Patric Chia, who directs the viewer’s gaze to a confusion between reality and fiction, when filming the dancers but also the backstage conversations. The film is responsible for the same trance in which the characters are on stage, to the sound of 90’s rave music, and nobody wishes to break free. Patric Chia continues to explore the world of the deepest human emotions, in its authentic and performative dimensions, with a clearly expressive and unique authorial language. (Mafalda Melo)