The thorn in the heart, the documentary by Michel Gondry which perfectly complements The Book of Solutions

Available for free streaming (on MK2 Curiosity), this film tells the story of his aunt Suzette, whom he renamed Denise and who is played by Françoise Lebrun in her fiction.

With The Book of Solutions, Michael Gondry tells the story of a film shoot that goes live. He offered Pierre Niney the role of a particularly creative director inspired by himself, and opposite him, Françoise Lebrun (The Mom and the Whore) plays his aunt, Denise, a woman dear to his heart who welcomes him to her house in the Cévennes so that he can shoot several key scenes of his film.

The Book of Solutions: Michel Gondry’s comeback with Pierre Niney (review)

In real life, Denise’s name was Suzette. Died in 2021, she was at the heart of a documentary also produced by the creator ofEternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind titled The Thorn in the Heart. A very touching film, released in 2009, in which the director recounted his journey as a teacher in a hilltop village in the Cévennes. He signed a pretty portrait of a member of his family who meant so much in his life, and who has long awakened the imagination of his students. But also from his nephew, who later took a camera to film all kinds of stories.

Photos taken from The Thorn in the Heart.

On the occasion of the theatrical release of Book of Solutions, the French director was invited by MK2 Curiosity to present three of his films to the public, free of charge for a week. Then, each project posted online on VOD on the site costs 2.99 euros to rent. The Thorn in the Heart is part of it, just like Tokyo (selection of short fiction films created with Bong Joon-ho and Leos Carax) and another documentary, The We and the I.

To see The Thorn in the Heart free streaming, it’s here.

Françoise Lebrun plays Aunt Denise in The Book of Solutions.

“Come on, zou! Let’s go to the cinema…”
First advise you The Thorn in the Heartwhich offers a perfect complement to Book of Solutions. Here is what Christophe Narbonne wrote in our pages about it, at the time of its cinema release.

“Mixing archive images (Jean-Yves shot small films in super-8 in his youth), testimonies, playful interludes and “accidents” techniques (microphones in the field, stolen off-screen dialogues), The Thorn in the Heart, while painting the picture of a rural and secular France in the process of disappearing, is similar to the falsely DIY films of which Gondry has the secret. This striptease in the form of a kaleidoscope above all updates an old family drama whose effects we can still measure, with emotion, on the different protagonists, Gondry included.”

Trailer :

Michel Gondry: “They always bring me back to Eternal Sunshine…”