Sebastien Tellier: “La Ritournelle”
We’ve already hailed “La Ritournelle” as one of the most beautiful songs of the last few years, but furthermore, even the two videos released for the song are great. The first clip is for the original track, released last year, and while it beautifully (and mysteriously) depicts the story of a man living in isolation and his memories of the woman who once accompanied him there, it’s the second clip, for Mr. Dan’s remix of the track, that is superior. Before getting into that though, below are the download links and info for the original video.
Video: “La Ritournelle” - Sebastien Tellier
Director: Mathieu Mantovani (?)
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime] [iPod]
MP3: “La Ritournelle” - Sebastien Tellier
To round off the first installment of Music Video Monday, here is my favorite new find, Ace Norton’s fantastic video for Mr. Dan’s equally-fantastic remix of “La Ritournelle”. Though it’s a technique that’s been done before, most notably in The Thrills excellent 2005 clip for “The Irish Keep Gatecrashing” (view here), Norton employs it to better effect here, not only creating an awesome visual effect but also using crafty camerawork to impart a narrative onto the video. The clip opens with a young couple frolicking and doing the couple thing in a golden field, before the camera takes off on a high-speed forward-tracking journey through the city, taking us through houses, down drains, under water, and into parties and debaucherous bedrooms. We are shown all of the different aspects and variants of love, as we move from the couple in the opening scene (in which the camera comes to focus on the girl’s bracelet before taking off into the woods a split second later), to the same girl from that scene with another man in bed at a party (we know this because, subtly, Norton has the camera linger on her bracelet for another fleeting moment in this second scene), to the one-night-stands taking place throughout the house at the party and later an older man proposing to his girlfriend in a fancy restaurant. Finally, the closing scene shows an old woman in a hospital bed as her heartbeat flatlines, and her elderly husband watches helplessly. As the man walks dazed from the room, the camera pans to the right in rhythm with one last swoon of the brass, and we see another young couple, holding each other’s hands in the same fashion as the couple in the opening scene did. With this final shot, the video comes full circle, and as one love is lost in the hospital room, another is being kindled just around the corner.
Video: “La Ritournelle” (Mr. Dan’s Magic Wand Remix) - Sebastien Tellier
Director: Ace Norton
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime] [iPod]
MP3: “La Ritournelle” (Mr. Dan’s Magic Wand Remix) - Sebastien Tellier