On the Edge

The ailing body in this film is the public hospital itself. Nicolas Peduzzi steps away from his obsession with marginalized American spaces under the grip of codeine (Southern Belle) or mental hurricanes (Ghost Song), and instead examines, in a direct cinema style, a battered institution. État limite is supported by a powerful opening sequence with a gabber track that deserves a place in a grimacing Pantheon, the "Chopin-esque" score by Gaël Rakotondrabe, and most importantly, the beautiful black-and-white photographic inserts by Pénélope Chauvelot. The film avoids being a conventional documentary "on a subject" by unfolding a range of raw emotions that inform us deeply about the pulsations stirring the Beaujon Hospital. The psychiatrist’s back pain, followed in close-up, encapsulates a bitter potion that seems far from disappearing: the pauperization of public services and the compassionate juggling skills needed to carry out the liaison role within the hospital-hive, among patients, doctors, interns, and exhausted police officers. It is this instability that drives the film, one that is just, discreet, and precisely attuned to the stakes it raises.

Benoît Hické
Programmer and professor