Mix-Up

Price: ~~25,00 €~~ 23,90 €

One of the most remarkable and innovative documentares ever made, this film by Francoise Romand follows the famous true story of two English women who as babies got switched in the hospital and 20 years later discovered that they've been raised by the wrong sets of parents.

Romand enlists all the surviving family members in her haunting and bizarre investigation, which involves not only a recounting but a reenactment of all the significant events in he two daughters' emotional histories. The seriousness and thouroughness with which she pursues her approach create a formal beauty and a witty precision in framing, pacing, editing, use of music, and mise en scene that is inseparable from the film's ethical and philosophical project... The mix-up of the title refers not only to the putative subject but to many stylistic and formal collisions: fiction versus fact, French versus English, memory versus imagination...

DVD Extras:

Bonus Film, Interviews, Bios, Filmographies

Movies on this DVD:

"Mix-Up" | Francoise Romand | FR | 1985 | 60 min

Festivals & Awards

Film Credits

Press Ratings

1986-1987:
New York (Modern Art Museum et Lincoln Center, ouverture du New Directors New Films), Los Angeles (AFI Film Festival), Toronto (Festival of Festivals), Montréal (Festival Films de Femmes), Mannheim, Edimbourg, Belfort (Jeune Cinéma), Vancouver

Director: Francoise Romand

Music: Niciolas Frize
Produced by: Pascale Breugnot
Cinematography by: Emile Navarro

"A deliciously oddball movie... sounds like the synopsis for a hilarious if cruel comedy... Mix-up has some of the style of Peter Greenaway's Falls and The Draughtsman's Contract... It's the work of a filmmaker of original vision..." (New York Times)
"Romand doesn't comment directly on much of this. But her intelligence and point of view - along with her youth and foolhardiness - is manifest in every frame. To an extent she treats her people as if they're puppets, but what happened in Nottingham in 1946 was the cruelest puppet show of all; what Romand underlines is their humanity. And she evokes, in us, extremely deep and private feelings. We can't help but think back on our own childhood terrors, our fears of not belonging - on how they were soothed, if they were soothed, and how the process coloured our present worldview. " (Village voice)
"As interesting as the story of Mix Up is the way Romand tells it : a queer, distanced, high-tech style, with carefully composed and balanced frames, symbolic settings and many obviously scripted and staged scenes. There's a pristine, farcical quality about the style, but its very overcomposed rigor ironically suggests the absurdity of a world where havoc can be wreaked by mere chance, where things simply can't be controlled. Mix Up is as unique and interesting a documentary as you're likely to see for quite a while."
(Los Angeles Times)

For more information, please visit this products webpage.

Mix-Up was added to our catalog on Monday 13 August, 2007.