I Did Not Die (2008)

Alix is a woman of 27 looking for the only thing she is incapable of: love. After a series of boyfriends who pass her on to each other, she finds herself in the hands of the pimp Raphaël, who works in Rome and Saint-Ouen. He sells her to a Pole. This man rapes her and leaves her for dead. She’s found by Frédéric, whose love has been repeatedly rejected after the breakup with his wife, and Hélène, a young woman who is taking care of her comatose mother. Alix and Frédéric have a sort of relationship and form two opposite poles in the concept of love, about which the film philosophises at length. Despite this charged subject, the film also maintains a light tone.
I Did Not Die, a three-hour film, is made up of three parts: Par les beaux soirs d’été, followed by Le chant des séparés and ending with Par des chemins étranges. There is a surfeit of anecdotes and stories within stories are repeatedly told in an unconventional way. The imagination is unbounded, and that can occasionally seem too ambitious and repetitive but in any case it’s always surprising. You could say that Jean-Charles Fitousse has shaped his ars poetica.