Director and former Gondry assistant François Néméta sent a description of La lettre, which is on The Work of Director Michel Gondry DVD and the French release of Human Nature.
hmmm... la lettre was shot in january 1998 for a TV program which was called "en attendant l'an 2000" (waiting for year 2000) on Canal +. Canal + had given some money to make a short film to several directors (Marc Caro, Francois Ozon and Michel Gondry) for this program. The theme had to be ... year 2000.
and Michel did a short film which was completely anti modern, in black and white, with no amazing technique at all, except "photographic basics". It tells the story of two brothers (approx. 16 and 12) who talk in the middle of the night in their house about girls and love, school and photo.
The young boy has a passion : photography. In the middle of the night, he's doing a blow up of a photo of the girl he loves, right in the dark corridor of his house. The big brother, who woke up to go to the loo, finds the young brother and starts to talk with him. they whisper in the night, about the girl on the photo.
The big brother tells the little brother to stop being shy "and always hide behind his camera", that he should get the girl that he loves, kiss her, that she's visibly crazy about him, and that he should do "the first move", before year 2000 arrives, or he would be ridiculous at school...
at night, the young boy has a dream : he has the "camera-head" : his head is a giant camera, and right in the middle of the new year 2000 party, he breaks everything with his huge head, and cannot kiss a girl before the countdown...
the next morning, he listens to his courage, takes his bicycle and goes to see her. she's about to leave for her holiday, and she has a letter for him. he takes the letter and gets back home.
On the way he stops and reads it : she says that she would love to keep her feelings as they are, that he will always be her friend, and that she would love to flirt with his big brother.
the young boy, depressed, gets back home on his bike. All around, the city is "negative" black and white. when he gets back home, he puts all the girl's pics in the trash.
this short movie has the typical look of the 50's black and white french movies. it was shot on Ilford 35mm film. All the special effects were done "in camera", old fashioned style. It gives a very true and pure adolescent, cruel story about love and girls, as seen from the eyes of a young shy french boy. The young boy has a lot of the young Michel in him : as him, he was always having his 35mm camera around his neck, always framing his friends, doing photos, learning with his brothers the very first photographic techniques.
[ed: François notes here, I think correctly, that while La lettre isn't "Gondriesque," in the sense that he uses inventive new ways to tell a story, it certainly is a Gondry film because] it has real poetry and sensibility. the young actors were very good, and it was Michel's very first attempt with dialogs. (he wanted to have "something with dialogs" on his reel at that time, just to prove the american studios that he could direct something else than music videos or commercials) a subtitled version exists (probably at partizan's office)
Thanks François!
As for that "poetry and sensibility" part, La lettre does have much of Gondry's signature style: film projection onto a backdrop, a bit of the surreal, a viewpoint of childlike innocence, a dream, etc.
