La Vie Héroìque de B.S. – Un opéra en trois actes

Duret’s film is a narrative and critical drama depicting the evolution of the main character, an industrial designer named B.S., whose unwavering belief in the rational, unnatural uncertainties of modernist thought, baseless selfconfidence, and his chronic lack of perspective on his objects of study drive him to disenchantment and therefore madness. The film starts with B.S.’s undertaking the impossible project of achieving an effective synthesis of forms inherited from the twentieth century, inspired by figures such as Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Eileen Gray, the Eames spouses or Enzo Mari. In act II he receives the mad commission to redraw a chicken egg to optimize packaging and transport, finding himself having to contradict the laws of nature by trying to perfect an ideal form. Finally, in act III, after loosing his modern certainties on the use and origin of forms, B.S. embarks on a journey to Greece to understand the conditions of appearance and conceptualization of the very first manufactured form: the Doric column. Using his own exhibitions as film sets for this project, in this epic film Duret combines different references and styles such as the aesthetics of archive design films of the second half of the twentieth century, industrial post-war advertisements, TV popular science magazines, The Adventures of Tintin and finally psychedelic experimental movies.