Coinciding with an ongoing exhibition at the Fondation Cartier featuring the work of the film’s subject, Indian architect Bijoy Jain, the event was a splendid way for me to reconnect with my love of Bombay — Mumbai.
I had never heard of filmmaking duo Bêka & Lemoine before last week. Then a friend said “come to Paris for this film, these two do fabulous work,” and that’s all I needed. She’s a film publicist who has organized some of my most special interviews for me. As well as a fellow Italian, although she lives across the pond from me in Paris, and so I trust her wholeheartedly. Turns out she was absolutely right to push me to go.
The film played to a packed audience, a cool cultural crowd which could perhaps only exist in Paris and the film was even followed by a Q&A with the subject of the film, Mumbai-based architect Bijoy Jain, plus the filmmakers answering questions — all moderated by Juliette Lecorne, the associate curator of the exhibition Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. The exhibition is ongoing at the Fondation Cartier, which also supported the film with Bêka and Partners.
As the Barbican Centre in London wrote about the duo, “Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine are two of the foremost architectural artists working today. Their films focus on the relationship of people and design, emphasising the presence of everyday life within some of the most iconic architectural projects of recent decades.” So how come I’d never heard of them or their films? I mean, I’m hardly an outsider when it comes to cinema and art, and when you tie into it world culture subjects, I should be in the know! But I wasn’t.
Turns out Bêka & Lemoine, who boast more than 50K followers on Instagram alone, don’t go the traditional route — on anything. They forego festivals, turning instead of their self-distributed model of selling their extraordinary films, right from their own website. This way of attracting great subjects and then finding a “couture” — one of a kind — way to distribute their work to the public at large seems like a groundbreaking movement, one that could lead to cutting out the middle men of cinema selling. And by that I mean all those who at the moment act like gatekeepers and taste experts.
But what all this boils down to is that awful word we now use so frequently — content. Does The Sense of Tuning live up to expectations, as far as its content goes? Yes, yes and then yes. It’s a phenomenally crafted film that feels like a visually delicious podcast, like a walk through Mumbai with an extraordinary man, Jain, as he shows the duo, who shoot the footage and I assume also edit, sound design it and produce it, his city.
Personally, I could not stop smiling throughout the hour and a half that the film played, inside the comfy cinema of the MK2 Bibliothèque multiplex. From the cacophony of the initial shots of Mumbai traffic, which needs to be experienced first hand to fully understand its dance of chaos, to the dogs barking inside Jain’s idyllic designed home in the West Byculla area of Southern Mumbai and all through the day — the film was shot in one go, on a single day the couple spent with the architect and artist — I found myself joyfully following along. It’s a crazy journey, full of thoughts and ideas, but also a complete sensory overload what The Sense of Tuning puts us, the audience through. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Jain himself is part architect, part yogi, part philosopher and fully someone who could spearhead the latest campaign for fashion house Loewe, as their model-slash-brand ambassador. He dresses in all black, with a long kurta topping a lungi, a kind of wrapped skirt for men. His look is accessorized by his full head of silver hair and Japanese looking sneakers. He performs a kind of personalized Yoga practice in the morning, surrounded by his numerous dogs, who seem to stay away from him while he’s stretching and deep breathing. His house is a sanctuary and yet Jain admits that he doesn’t own keys nor are there locks, it’s always open and it have walls, really, nor a ceiling. This, in the middle of a city which not only interrupts the filming with its outburst of sound, but also is known to have some of the most destructive Monsoon seasons in Southern Asia.
Among what could appear like a collection of contradictions, Jain displays an artistic force to be reckoned with. He works on stone pieces which, as he boasts, are carved and polished without the use of electricity. His various assistants, from housekeepers to warehouse helpers and the late stonemason who helped him shape the pieces which are on display currently at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, all seem to be planets gravitating around his grand solar-like energy, looking to make him happy — even if just in how they arrange the food plates on the table for lunch.
What perhaps made the film a complete joy for me to watch is Jain’s love for his hometown, which he left as a young man to pursue his studies abroad, but resolutely returned to as an artist, because of the inspiration it offers. He admits in the film to feeling at ease in Mumbai and his movements through the city’s chaotic traffic and crowds, which could look to an outsider like a choreographed routine, seem to back his words. It is wonderful to see someone who is this content with his own world and isn’t searching for happiness somewhere else. We should all learn to find fulfillment in our little part of the universe, as Jain clearly has, because that act of militant anti-conformism alone would make the world a better place.
The Sense of Tuning will next play in London on May 7th, at the Royal Academy of Art, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
The Sense of Tuning, France/India 2024, 4K, Color, 96 min, Music: Riddhi Joshi
Images sourced with permission.