La Maison de la Radio, by Boyd van Hoeij

Variety, February 14, 2013

A terrific docu from Gallic nonfiction filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, La Maison de la radio adds revealing images to sounds that will be familiar to millions of French public-radio listeners.

Presented as a commentary-free look behind the scenes at one of Europe’s great cultural institutions, the film was edited by Philibert himself, who puts all collaborators of the different channels, departments and programs on equal footing by simply showing them at work. Occasionally humorous as well as continually insightful, this local April release could also appeal to doc-friendly distribs elsewhere.

The film is named after architect Henry Bernard’s gigantic circular building, which reportedly has 1,000 offices and is home to the various stations of Radio France, including mainstays France Inter and France Info, featured prominently here. French public radio has an almost religious status in culture-loving, politics-mad and talk-obsessed France, with an annual budget of more than €550 million (roughly $733 million).

The opening montage juxtaposes various radio hosts on the air, building to a cacophony of voices from a wide range of subjects, before focusing on an intimate office conversation between a veteran news journo and a clumsy new recruit. Here, as throughout the film, the people onscreen aren’t identified, which appropriately makes them equals in pursuit of a single goal: Make good, French radio.

Philibert nimbly switches among different genres, including snippets of literary readings and subsequent sound-effect recordings; news programs coming together with last-minute changes; music being performed by a variety of artists in the building’s recording studios; guests (including novelist Umberto Eco, in impeccable French) being interviewed on air; and a quizshow playing out in front of a live audience. And despite the title, the film also leaves the building for a recording session of nature sounds in the woods; interviews in people’s homes; and a live commentary session from a sports reporter strapped to a motorcycle driver during the Tour de France. 

While it can be fascinating to see how much work and effort go into making the various radio programs, Philibert punctuates his material with something that’s at least as important in keeping audiences invested: humor. Often very simple situational scenes, such as a sequence of people in various studios, waiting for contruction noise to die down before they can continue recording, are edited for maximum comic effect. The talent for finding laughs in everyday situations is what has endeared auds to some of the helmer’s previous films, including his 2002 international hit, To Be and to Have. 

Two minor problems in the closing reels hold the film back from instant-classic status. It starts to run out of steam about 15 minutes before it ends, and there’s a rare talking-head interview of sorts with a classical-music show producer whose office is stacked to the rafters with compact discs. While there’s nothing wrong with what is said or how it is shot, it feels like an intrusion in what is otherwise a beautiful lineup of simply observed behavior and situations.

Tech credits are solid, including the all-important sound mix from Olivier Do Huu (Son of Rambow, Berlinale title The Nun). A wide variety of music, much of it performed live, further adds to the pic’s universal appeal.

La Maison de la Radio, by Jordan Mintzer

The Hollywood Reporter,  February 13,  2013

To Be and To Have director Nicolas Philibert explores the inner workings of Radio France in this Berlin Panorama premiere.

Berlin - Putting a face to the voices behind the NPR-style behemoth that is Radio France, Nicolas Philibert’s fly-on-the-wall documentary, La Maison de la Radio, is an enchanting exploration of the inner workings and tireless professionals whose efforts resound over the airwaves of one of Gaul’s premiere cultural institutions. Not unlike the director’s In the Land of the Deaf, which used images to explore a soundless world, or Louvre City, which raised the lid on the infamous Parisian museum, the film is a textured portrait of human beings and the jobs they do, offering scant commentary but much to chew on, not to mention plenty of laughs -- no small feat in a movie dedicated to something as dry sounding as “public radio.” While « Maison » will be an easy sell in Francophone markets, with Les Films du Losange (Amour) releasing locally in early April, it’s got enough of a charm factor to carry it to niche overseas theatrical outlets, VOD and specialty broadcast.

One thing standing in its way could be the notable lack of on-screen titles, or anything overtly explaining who and what it is we’re watching. But like contemporaries Raymond Depardon or Frederick Wiseman, Philibert is much less interested in facts and figures than in plunging himself into an unknown universe, shooting dozens of hours of footage (along with credited cameramen Katell Djian and Laurent Chevallier) and then piecing it together to construct a story whose central plot is the location itself, and particularly the people inhabiting it.

In this instance, that place is the massive (and massively ugly) donut-shaped building which houses several of France’s premiere public radio stations, most notably France Inter, France Info and France Bleu. Introducing the various subjects and studios in an opening cacophony of sounds and voices (expertly mixed by Olivier Do Huu, The Princess of Montpensier), the film eventually focuses on a few employees, who were clearly singled out for both their level of expertise and their dry, and very French, brand of charisma.

Without a doubt, the most entertaining of them is France Inter news manager Marie-Claude Rabot-Pinson, who sifts through a series of grisly fait divers (news briefs) with all the delicacy of a stand-up comic. Then there’s Marguerite Gateau, who sits behind a mixing panel directing radio plays and readings, offering wry commentary while listening in with all the attention of a hawk stalking its prey.

The sight of her sitting at the console, all ears, is one that Philibert returns to time and again, as he does with several of the dozens of characters presented. It’s a smart and subtle way of revealing what it’s like to work in a place where sounds takes precedence over images -- something that’s become virtually extinct in our visually overloaded society. Even the slightest comma in a piece of news copy can resonate wrongly over the airwaves and, as evidenced in a training session featured early on, the job of nearly everyone at the organization (which counts over 4,000 employees) is to make sure that everything sounds not only right, but perfect.

For fans of Radio France’s many programs (this reviewer being one of them), there’s also something thrilling about finally seeing the people behind shows heard on a daily basis, especially widely popular ones like France Inter’s morning broadcast, headed up by Patrick Cohen, or its nightly call-in show, « Le Telephone Sonne », hosted by the peppy Alain Bedouet. In most cases, they wind up looking more or less like they sound, as if their faces somehow grew out of their voices, rather than the opposite.

Philibert also delves into the difficulties of finding adequate recording environments, meeting deadlines and dealing with international crises from a far-away newsroom, although the film never gets too technical, favoring human behavior over logistical details. As such, there’s no major narrative line to cling to, which may be a turn-off to those viewers who like their documentaries written like Hollywood dramas, with a clear beginning, middle and end. (« Maison » either runs a tad too long or short, depending on one’s interest level.)

Featured alongside the many hosts are some of their invitees, including writers like Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere, as well as various musicians -- from opera singers to hip-hop artists -- whose live performances provide an upbeat and cheeky soundtrack.

La Maison de la Radio, by Noël Murray

The Dissolve.com, September 3, 2013

American audiences might not have the immediate connection to Nicolas Philibert’s documentary La Maison de la radio that they would if Philibert had made a film about a day in the life of NPR, or CNN. La Maison de la radio is about Radio France, and shows how that longstanding national institution’s team of producers, reporters, hosts, and commentators assemble news, human-interest stories, and entertainment into a polished package. For French radio listeners, this film is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the working lives of some of the most beloved figures in broadcasting. For Americans, it’s just a documentary about a high-toned, richly resourced radio network, housed in a beautiful, Henry Bernard-designed round building on the banks of the Seine.

But Philibert is one of the best in the world at fly-on-the-wall documentaries, running second only to Frederick Wiseman. Philibert’s best-known films, In The Land Of The Deaf and To Be And To Have, take viewers to uncommon places and acclimate them scene-by-scene, so that by the time the closing credits roll, every face is familiar. Philibert indulges in some direct interviews—something Wiseman usually avoids—but his subjects talk about specific aspects of their jobs, and not so much about the history of where they work or their lives outside the office. Whatever viewers learn about the people in Philibert’s documentaries, they learn by watching them in action, not by looking at them while they sit in a chair and talk.

Then again, La Maison de la radio’s subjects sit in chairs and talk for a living, which complicates Philibert’s approach. The film is fairly equally divided between footage of Radio France’s personnel preparing to go on the air and footage of them actually behind a microphone, interviewing people or reading copy. And though there’s a lot of variety to the programming on Radio France—from a roving Tour De France update by a reporter on a motor-scooter to an in-studio quiz show with a live audience—there’s nothing inherently riveting about a few out-of-context minutes of an actor or writer or musician or journalist filling airtime, no matter how good they may be at it.

What is riveting are the scenes of a sound-effects man setting up his equipment in the woods to record ambient noise for future stories, and the blind announcer keying her copy onto a braille machine, and the veteran producer who schools a cub on how write for an aural medium (“No one hears quotation marks on the radio,” she warns), and the staff meeting where they joke about whether they need to bring on a left-wing sociologist to discuss the popularity of Justin Bieber, and the reporter who painstakingly works on an intro by listening to the playback and trimming words. That latter sequence is Philibert at his best, using strong composition and editing to capture not just the fundamentals of the moment, but its essence. For a medium where—as one producer says—“silence isn’t allowed,” the most memorable moments in La Maison de la radio are purely visual, as DJs hold court from behind a stack of CDs, and broadcasters bustle their way through the curved halls. Philibert allows even those who’ve never heard a second of Radio France to experience what the network is like, on both sides of the speakers.

A Look Behind What You Hear, by Manohla Dargis

The New York Times, September 3, 2013

The soft babble that streams from the circular building in Nicolas Philibert’s documentary La Maison de la Radio is a singularly human hum. The imposing white structure, which overlooks the Seine in the 16th arrondissement in Paris, an easy walk from the Eiffel Tower, is home to Radio France, the state broadcasting company, which has seven networks and many more stations. Designed by the architect Henry Bernard and known as La Maison de la Radio, the building functions as something of a geographic placeholder in Mr. Philibert’s movie, which offers fleeting peeks at the news-gathering worker bees, velvet-voiced on-air personalities and visiting luminaries who congregate inside it.

Mr. Philibert opens on a whirl of faces and voices, with illuminating words like Japan, earthquake and Strauss-Kahn cutting through the commotion. These headline fragments temporally situate you, which is helpful, because Mr. Philibert shuns conventional nonfiction signposts like voice-overs and on-screen information. Instead, using a stationary camera (the absence of jiggle is nice) and a fly-on-the-wall approach, he inserts you into rooms, next to bodies and among voices. None of these are identified while they’re on camera, but if you know what the veteran screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière looks like, or if you stick around to read the end credits, you will know he’s one of the guests who pass through. A somewhat jolly Umberto Eco shows up in a studio at one point, too.

There’s a suggestion that the movie takes place over a 24-hour period, although Mr. Philibert has said that he and his team shot for six months, from January to July 2011. This synthetic time frame gives all the material a narrative shape, turning snippets from different weeks, months and broadcasts into a day-in-the-life story. As in many such stories, there are also leading men and women, along with the supporting cast members and guest stars like Mr. Eco. Among the most vivid main characters is Marguerite Gateau, who sits behind a console, at times with her head somewhat cocked — as if she were picking up frequencies the rest of us can’t hear — and directs performers for a dramatic program on the subtlest line readings, guiding them with admirable serenity past fumbled words.

Ms. Gateau is pleasant company, even for the brief time she’s on screen, and it’s understandable that Mr. Philibert continues to return to her, along with a grimly funny Marie-Claude Rabot-Pinson, whose job seems to be pulling choice news items from the information flowing in. Yet the precise nature of Ms. Rabot-Pinson’s job remains frustratingly unclear. Does she make assignments, write the news, edit copy? Who knows? It’s similarly unclear if Ms. Gateau only directs performers or if she also casts them. Mr. Philibert’s intimate, calm style can be very appealing, as can be his patience, both of which were crucial to turning his 2002 documentary,  To Be and to Have - which follows a class of schoolchildren and their teacher over a year - into an epic of human emotion.

There are some memorable moments in La Maison de la Radio, like a brief, lightly comic visit with a classical music personality who’s plonked behind a stack of CDs so towering that he looks like a drowning man. This interlude, however, seems over before it has begun. And, as Mr. Philibert continues to pop in and out of different studios, in and out of the building, flitting from one face to the other, it feels as if he were searching for a story that never emerges. In an article that ran in The Guardian in June 2012, Mr. Philibert mentioned that he was then working on this documentary. “The strength of radio is linked to its absence of images, and that’s what attracted me to the subject,” he wrote. “It’s a paradox: a film about radio. Who knows? Maybe it’s not such a good idea, after all.”

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

La Maison de la Radio, by Geoff Andrew

London International Film Festival, BFI - October 2013

A humane, exhilarating portrait of Radio France from the inside, airing a dawn-to-dusk vision of the station with affection and philosophical depth.

Structured as a day-in-the-life in the workings of Radio France (but compiled from footage shot over half a year), this latest gem from the great French documentarist Nicolas Philibert provides welcome, illuminating access into a mysterious world which usually remains invisible even as it grants free rein to our imaginations. As his patient, perceptive camera observes the preparation and recording of the news and sports reports, drama and documentaries, quizzes and concerts, chat shows and DJ sessions broadcast by the station’s various channels, it’s funny, touching and – ironically, perhaps – visually exhilarating, for this is also undoubtedly a subtle and lovely exploration of the human face. As often with Philibert, there’s an underlying fascination with how language reflects and affects thoughts, feelings and ideas, a deeply compassionate concern that ensures both the film’s philosophical richness and its enormously enchanting appeal. Has it a flaw? Only that it leaves you wanting more.