The Origins of A Day in your Life

A film that has influenced both Project Cube and A Day in Your Life is the aforementioned Un

Homme Qui Dort (1974)18 by Perec and Queysanne. Un Homme Qui Dort relies heavily on a voice-over that narrates the actions of a character from the second person perspective, as is the case for some parts of A Day in your Life and Project Cube. Interesting in this respect, is Chris

Andrews’ point that Perec alludes to other literary works within the novel on which the film is based in an attempt to define a place for his work within a broader canon of literature:

“[i]n examining the intertextual dimension of Un Homme qui dort we have seen that the novel may be considered as a puzzle piece with regard to the texts which define its subject and as a whole puzzle with regard to these which furnish allusions and quotations. In the first case, the author makes a piece of his or her own to fit between those already in place; in the second case, a new puzzle is fabricated from pieces both pre-existing and freshly cut.”19

This idea of creating a puzzle consisting of pieces relating to various texts is essential to the conception of A Day in your Life. I constructed a narrative that is constituted by a web of fragments of factual interviews and the memories of a fictional character. As Andrews suggests, the different parts can be seen as puzzle pieces, and the interviews for my project, which were shot before the narrative was developed, can be labelled as the pre-existing pieces (akin to the literary precursors of Perec’s novel) which give the overall narration a rough direction.

Further, the three filmic works of Un Homme Qui dort, A Day in your Life, and my version of

Project Cube, are subject to a certain pre-defined structure. That this is the case with Un Homme Qui dort might not be immediately obvious to the viewer, however, going back to the literary

source of the film, Andrews has identified a clear separation of its narrative into chapters that are unified by the extensive use of lists.20 Andrews writes that the “lists are repetitive, accumulating synonyms. Rather than displaying variety they seek to exhaust the contents of a restricted visual field, or the nuances of a single state of mind.”21 That Perec’s generative structure results in such lists highlights another commonality amongst the three works, the idea of exhausting the viewer through constant repetition. For Project Cube, the repetition lies in the images, but A Day in your Life is centred around linguistic repetition.

The voice-over employed in the fictional sequences of A Day in your Life is constrained by a particular sentence structure, which is an approach borrowed from the Oulipo. I decided that in all the sentences beginning with I the second word has to be remember, so all the sentences within the narrative by which the narrator refers to themselves necessarily describe memories. With this constraint, the first person narrator ends up only ever discussing herself in relation to her past, while the second person narrator of course avoids the “I” in favour of “you” and, by speaking in the present tense, creates the sensation that they are instructing the character to undertake the actions that are being described. This constraint thus enforces a temporal distinction between the two types of fictional segment that feature in the film. The choice of words employed in this constraint is not incidental – it is inspired by Joe Brainard’s work I

remember.22 Although Brainard is not a member of Oulipo, the American’s idea was soon adapted into a constraint which can be found in the work of members of Oulipo.23 _{It is listed in}

20 _{Andrews, 790–91.} 21 _{Andrews, 792.}

22 _{Joe Brainard, I Remember (New York City: Granary Books, 2001).} 23 _{Mathews and Brotchie, Oulipo Compendium, 163.}

the Oulipo Compendium, as a “manner of writing [that], while not Oulipian, has played a large enough role among the group’s members to deserve mention.”24 _{The constraint was even}

developed further within Oulipo and variations have been created, such as Jacques Bens’ I’ve

forgotten.25 In an afterword to Brainard’s I remember,26 Ron Padgett, the Literary Executor of Brainard’s estate, writes: “I don’t remember the genesis of I Remember, but as soon as Joe Brainard showed the initial version of it to friends and read it in public, everyone saw that he had made a marvellous discovery”.27 Padgett thinks that

“Joe’s originality came from the fresh way he looked at things. He saw straight through complexity and preconception to the clear and obvious. Instead of writing an autobiography or memoir, neither of which he was interested in doing, he simply wrote more than 1,000 brief entries that begin with the words “I remember”. His method had something childlike about it, and indeed Joe did have a taste for things that were free of adult overcomplication.”28

It is precisely that childlike element that is key to the first person narration of A Day in your Life – the storyline is simple, the sentences are short, the word choices seem ordinary, and the style resembles a description. It might seem peculiar that the more rigid sentence pattern enforced by this constraint is imposed on the character’s memories and not their daily routine. However, the

24 _{Mathews and Brotchie, 163.} 25 _{Mathews and Brotchie, 163.} 26 _{Brainard, I Remember, 169–76.} 27 _{Brainard, 169.}

actions of the character are rigid because they are a daily routine, and, as such, such rigidity did not need to be reiterated in an imposed word pattern. Further, by applying an element of rigidity on the memories, the viewer might make a connection between the daily routine and the memories, perceiving the character as an individual who adheres to rules and values structure. Another interpretation points to the element of being trapped. The character is caught in a rigid web of structures that she cannot escape. These structures give the character a purpose but they simultaneously block her from dealing with her grief.

The idea of using interviews within a fictional film was inspired by Sally Potter’s Rage (2009),29

which tells its story through fictional interviews. This is to say that Potter does not employ any shots that depict the action of her storyline, but instead has actors perform scripted interviews. Her characters’ shared story emerges through their talking about the events, themselves, and each other.30 Given that there is no visual proof to verify the stories being told, the verbal testimonies come to feel like biased commentary and gossip. A Day in your Life makes use of interviews that are not scripted, and the interviewees were not informed of the questions beforehand. Their answers are thus spontaneous, and the footage is not rehearsed. And while the interviewees do not tell their accounts of a shared story, overall, the material produces a similar effect to Sally Potter’s interviews – the participants are talking about an event that the audience

29 _{Rage. Dir. Sally Potter.}

cannot see, therefore the audience is forced to rely on the biased and subjective telling of that person.