Light up the Void  

The music video for "Je suis si mince," directed in 1999 by Gaspar Noé for the singer Arielle, stands out as a unique visual object in the history of French music videos. Filmed before the director's major cinematic successes, it already reveals the formal obsessions that would characterize his work: a floating camera that traverses space like a free body, distortions of perspective, a taste for sensory immersion, and gentle strangeness. Arielle appears as a shifting, almost spectral figure at the heart of a minimalist yet intensely stylized setting.

The deliberately minimalist set serves as a laboratory for the filmmaker: Noé experiments with continuous movements that blur the lines and create a hypnotic tension between the singer, her assertive physicality, and the camera's gaze. The music video, bordering on surrealism and video installation, departs from the pop conventions of the time to offer a kind of filmed micro-performance.

Though a short work, Je suis si mince remains emblematic of a time when music videos still allowed directors to impose a radical style. In it, we see the future director of Irreversible and Enter the Void sketching out his future visual vertigo, while offering Arielle a rare and intriguing aesthetic setting.