A film with powerful photographic black & white pictures and a fragmented, dream-like story. The black & white also continues in the theme, according to Pradal: ‘Parce que mes personnages sont soit noirs, soit blancs’.The narrative form is described by the maker as a cross between a ‘horizontal’ and a ‘vertical’ line. The vertical line is about a mother and her son who move to a new estate atop a hill. The story is set in France in an Italian community which is more or less banished to a new estate between the real town and the sea. The location in an Italian community gave Pradal the opportunity openly to connect with the sixties Italian cinema he so admired. The horizontal storyline is about three petty criminals who go to the beach for a day with two young prostitutes. At the point where the horizontal and the vertical lines cross, the grip of fate becomes a ‘machine infernal’ (Pradal). By the side of the motorway, there is a fatal confrontation between Fulvio, a murderous member of the trio, and Cecco, his victim.The film is set in disconsolate wasteland, ‘terrain vagues’, empty motorways, uninhabited houses, a deserted coast… The tone is set by the coarse nonchalance of the young criminals. Dynamic images of nocturnal fairs contrast with thin pictures of still water landscapes. A dramatic story in which everything points to the inevitable death in the glaring lightof an inhospitable world. Canti is Pradal’s graduation film which he does not nevertheless regard as his first film, but as an ‘avant premier film’.
