The Shade (1998 film)
history| language = English | followed_by = I Am Josh Polonski's Brother }}
The Shade was Raphael Nadjari's debut feature.
- 1999 Cannes Film Festival - Official Selection, Un Certain Regard
- Bergamo Film Festival (1999) - Audience Award
Plot
The Shade is a modern adaptation of Dostoevsky's A Gentle Creature, (the same Gentle Creature that once inspired French director Robert Bresson), The film takes place in contemporary New York City. It tells the story of a Jewish middle aged pawnbroker who meets a mysterious woman who will become his wife without their truly knowing each other. The film begins with Simon, alone in his apartment with the corpse of his wife, Anna, who has just committed suicide. In his grief, he remembers the first time he met her, a year ago when she walked into his pawnbroker's shop in Spanish Harlem. Mysterious Anna, who seems to come from nowhere, impresses solitary Simon with her beauty, and he proposes to her on their first night out. They then enter into a passionate relationship that will lead her to death.
About the adaptation
Raphael Nadjari's idea about the cinematic adaptation was: "I have read Dostoevski's 'Gentle Creature' in 1997. I thought it was incredibly written. A sort of subjective voice, revealed as such, the impossible analysis that was a model for analysis. What a better story that a story that tries to understand how to tell a story? The gentle creature was just modern all the way. I know that as a filmmaker the most important was to read a narrative that was trying to unfold the mind of a narrator in a question form. To use subjectivity in a way that could transcend any prejudices and propose a new reading on the most ancient theme: Love."
The film is also the first collaboration between the Director of Photography Laurent Brunet and Raphael Nadjari. They will team again for I Am Josh Polonski's Brother(2000), Apartment #5C(2001), Avanim (2003) and Tehilim (2007). This film also marked the first time Nadjari worked with producers Geoffroy Grison, Francesca feder, Noah Harlan, Fred Bellaiche and Caroline Bonmarchand and with the editor and photographer Sean Foley - all of whom he would continue to work with for the remainder of his career to date.
- »IHT—External Review
- »CannesFestival—Cannes Film Festival Archive