The Trajectory of Emmanuel Carrère and Between Two Worlds

I first became interested in the artistry of Emmanuel Carrère through his 2018 genre-disintegrating novel The Kingdom. The book offered something completely original: an astute history of the earliest Christians filtered through the memoir of one of the French language’s great contemporary prose masters as he, now agnostic, reflects on his three years as a committed religious person. Describing it for what it is makes the whole thing come off a bit facetious or perhaps trivial, but Carrère avoids the trappings he must and transgresses the ones he shouldn’t—synthesizing into something singular. Some critics even dare call it The Confessions of the twenty-first century.

After a long history of adapting his written work into successful screenplays (Class Trip, The Adversary), Carrère stepped into the director’s chair for his first feature with 2005’s The Moustache. Based on his book of the same name, a man spontaneously shaves the moustache he has donned for the greater portion of his adult life—and, just as he does so, everyone around him claims he never had a ‘stache in the first place. Although I haven’t read the novel, the film feels like what a Michael Haneke film would look like had it been written by Slavoj Žižek. (If that doesn’t sound like a great date night movie, I don’t know what would.) Comedically stylish, thematically ambitious, and daringly psychoanalytic, The Moustache set a high bar for the first-time director—a bar that he wouldn’t even attempt to clear until over 15 years later with 2021’s Between Two Worlds, which is confusingly just now receiving its US release.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.