It’s a sunny spring day in Paris, and a young woman is in a mechanic’s workshop, tending to a retro silver Ford. She checks the engine oil and polishes the bonnet, grease smeared across her cheek. She hops in the car and begins a flâneur-like odyssey around the city, where she undergoes a series of strange, lightly surreal encounters—helping a woman move an antique chair across the street, dropping off boxes of plants at a store—before approaching the famous Fontaine des Lions in the city’s 12th arrondissement, where a figure stands waiting.
That figure is wearing an incongruously wintry outfit for this balmy weather—a trapper hat bedecked with embroidered crystals, an equally snug shearling-lined coat, knee-high boots—and carries bags with her, as if arriving for a stay with our unnamed protagonist. Then, she begins to walk towards the camera, and as you look more closely, you notice: is that… Kim Gordon?
Photo: Brigitte Lacombe
Yes, in fact, it is: the maverick musician and former Sonic Youth frontwoman is the titular star of this Claire Denis-directed short film, Avec Kim. (Real Gordon-heads will know that this isn’t her first time in front of the camera, having made brief but memorable appearances in Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There and Gus van Sant’s Last Days.) The film, which co-stars the French actor and director Suzanne Lindon as the younger woman, is premiering today at Venice Film Festival as part of Miu Miu Women’s Tales, the acclaimed short film series spearheaded by Miuccia Prada and her right-hand woman, Verde Visconti.
While previous directors have included everyone from Agnès Varda to Ava DuVernay to Miranda July, having Denis involved this year feels like a particular coup: the legendary 80-year-old French auteur behind modern classics like Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum is famous for her unflinching examinations of the lingering scars of colonialism, impacted by her upbringing in West Africa, as well as her tactile, elliptical visual style. As one of French cinema’s most uncompromising directors, it’s exceptionally rare for Denis to take on projects outside of her features; it’s been over a decade since she made a short film.
Thank goodness she did: Avec Kim is a mysterious and ultimately poignant meditation on intergenerational female friendship, which seems to echo the relationship Denis herself shares with Lindon. After watching Lindon’s debut feature, 2020’s Spring Blossom, Denis reached out to share her admiration, sparking a close friendship; they ended up collaborating on the screenplay for Denis’s most recent film, The Fence. (There’s some Gordon-Denis lore worth knowing here too, with Denis also directing a Sonic Youth video back in 2006.)
