An Extraordinary Excursion

With sober, simple, pathos-free editing, Théo Boulenger brings to life the extraordinary raw materials collected by his mother while she was working in a retirement home in the 1990s.

There's something miraculous about these voices reaching us today. 

These are words that - perhaps because of our complex relationship with death, old age and our own finitude - are normally destined to be forgotten, just like the elderly people from whom they emanate.

These old people laugh, sing, cry, reminisce, regret, philosophize or navigate through the mists of their own confusion.

Une excursion extraordinaire, as much in its subject matter as in the creative process behind it, is a very touching work in the way it embodies transmission.  

Of course, it's a son continuing his mother's work, but it's also a woman collecting the words of her elders, so that they don't fade away.

So that this filiation can continue, it's up to us to pick up the pearls that the protagonists of this documentary deliver to us, whether consciously or not.
 

Louis-Olivier Desmarais
Sound designer, composer and musician