La lune avec les dents

The international cinematic new wave came bursting into the Swiss cinema through the work of Michel Soutter, whose La lune avec les dents (The Moon with Teeth) became practically a manifesto of the movement. The film follows William, thirty-ish, out of work and looking for a new life after apparently having been thrown out of his previous one. He meets up with Noelle, who seems intrigued by his restlessness – until her economist boyfriend shows up. Yet plot details do little to convey the power of the film, which lay in its capturing the anarchic texture of William’s life – a life whose lack of direction was read as a rebuke of the Swiss myth of orderliness and self-satisfaction. With his roots in documentary, Soutter excelled at creating a loose, vibrant cinema, full of quick zooms and dynamic hand-held shots, with dialogue that often alternated between outright quotations and stylized interviews. Almost completely rejected in its era, La lune avec les dents is now widely seen as a milestone for Swiss cinema.