Patrick Wang has done this before. When his debut feature In the Family faced festival rejections in 2011, he booked it himself at the Quad Cinema in New York and earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination from the reviews that followed. With A. Rimbaud, his 175-minute portrait of French poet Arthur Rimbaud, the same logic holds: the film bypassed the major festival circuit, opening independently at Shapeshifters Cinemas and the Roxy in New York City. On Sunday, it receives its UK premiere at ICA London as part of The Final Film Festival.
The film works from a single constraint: only one character speaks. Blake Draper plays Rimbaud from adolescence through his death at 37, while every other voice is replaced by an unseen musical instrument. A viola, French horn, and erhu stand in for the people Rimbaud encounters. Wang wrote original English translations of Rimbaud's poems himself for the production. "There's a kind of loneliness in how our communications are incomplete," he told Screen Slate. "That's a theme in Rimbaud's life."
The festival bypass was deliberate. Wang told Screen Slate he considers the major institutions "bureaucrats flying the banner of art," more interested in institutional power than discovery. Casting came together while Wang was vacationing in Melbourne, assembled by casting director Thea McLeod. Draper arrived having read multiple Rimbaud biographies before auditioning. Wang called the preparation "unusual."
The UK premiere at Cinema 1 at ICA London begins at 6pm, followed by a Q&A. The Final Film Festival ran August 6 through 9.
