French director Julien Gaspar-Oliveri presents his debut feature La Frappe at the Lecce European Film Festival, after its world premiere in the Critics’ Week at Cannes and awards at events such as Angoulême. The film addresses family trauma and the weight of silence through Enzo and Carla, two siblings confronted with their father’s return.
Close-ups of skin and face as a narrative tool 🎥
Gaspar-Oliveri explains that he shot close-ups of faces and skin to show the contradictions of those who stay silent. To build that gaze, he drew on psychiatric research and on the essay The Body Keeps the Score, which addresses how trauma is inscribed in the body. The camera work seeks to capture what dialogue does not say: tensions, doubts and minimal gestures that sustain the emotional structure of the story.
Family silence, that old acquaintance who never misses the appointment 🤫
If there is something French cinema knows how to do, it is to seat a family at the table and let silence do the heavy lifting. Here the father returns, the children stay silent and the camera moves closer to the skin like someone checking an outstanding bill. The proposal bets on vitality and on rewriting pain, even if that means first going through that uncomfortable moment when no one knows where to look.