Manon de Boer, Sylvia Kristel - Paris

Manon de Boer, Sylvia Kristel - Paris, 2003, 39 minutes
Between November 2000 and June 2002, Manon de Boer recorded the stories and memories of Sylvia Kristel. At each recording session de Boer asked Kristel to speak about a city where she has lived: Paris, Los Angeles, Brussels, or Amsterdam; over the two years she spoke on several occasions about the same city. At first glance, the collection of stories appears to make up a sort of biography, but over time it shows the impossibility of biography: the impossibility of plotting somebody’s life as a coherent narrative.

For the film Sylvia Kristel - Paris, Manon de Boer finally selected two monologues on Paris, recorded at an interval of one year. Kristel’s stories wander through some of the key points in her life, fluidly forming and reforming the narrative elements. The city itself is rarely described directly. She speaks of her films, her love-affairs, and how these have influenced her life’s trajectory. The cities are coordinates to which her memories move to, find themselves within, and move away from. This finds a parallel in the image. Sylvia Kristel - Paris is a portrait of Sylvia Kristel, best known for her role in the 1970s erotic cult classic Emmanuelle, as well as an experimental documentary about the impossibility of memory in relation to biography.

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