The Mirror of Vanities
The existential wondering founding the genre of vanities is impressively focused on the XVIIth century painting. The film bases itself on the retrospective exhibition first set in the Museum of Caen, and then in the Petit Palais in 1990 / 1991, in order to show the great success of the phenomenon.
Type (Documentaire / Documentaire fiction / Série documentaire)DocumentaryGenre en anglaisArts & culture Directed by Jean-François JungSupported by CNC, Direction Développement et Formation, DRAC de Basse Normandie, Musée des Beaux Arts de Caen, Musée du Petit Palais, Ville de CaenDistributed by France Télévisions DistributionYear1993Duration52min
Another object of the film is to disclose the process of challenging at the heart of vanities. The genre obeys indeed to a few inner laws, to protocols ruling the setting of objects, to coded figures, to a staging aiming at being eventually deciphered as a challenge to philosophise, while remaining ironical about this reflexive gesture.
This dramatic device, this challenge, are highly modern in the eyes of Jean-François Jung, and the film, in its very structure and orientation, can represent them with strength and conviction while sparing a didactic speech.
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