No Sex Last Night
Sophie Calle
Presented only in theatres.
This film is part of the program Carte Blanche at Centre Pompidou.
“We hadn’t been living together for more than a year, but our relationship had worsened to such an extent that we had stopped talking to one another altogether. I dreamed of marrying him. He dreamed of making movies. To get him to travel across America with me, I suggested that we make a film during the trip. He agreed. Our absence of communication gave us the idea of equipping ourselves with separate cameras, making them the sole confidantes of our respective frustrations and secretly telling them all the things we were unable to say to each other. Having established the rules, on January 3, 1992, we left New York in his silver Cadillac and Headed for California.” – Sophie Calle
Starting in the late 1970s, Sophie Calle developed a body of work inspired by autobiography, using photography, film, text, and installations to create playful and melancholic autofictions. In these works, she addresses intimacy, encounters, desire, absence, mourning, and memory, often in the descriptive style of reportage or inventory. In 1992, with Gregory Shephard, the man she loved, the artist embarked on a road movie journey from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States, headed to Las Vegas, where they planned to get married. The film presents the intertwined viewpoints of the two protagonists, who film each other using video cameras over the course of their three-week trip, inside their Cadillac and in the many motels they stop at. “We each speak almost exclusively to our cameras because our relationship had deteriorated to the point where we no longer spoke to each other. Lack of dialogue, lack of technique — everything stemmed from that.” Each morning, Sophie Calle records a shot of an unmade bed while her voice says the words: “No Sex Last Night.” At the end of the trip, their marriage in Las Vegas marks the end of their relationship. Thus, No Sex Last Night is the narrative of a mourning: that of her relationship with her lover, but also the mourning of her friend, writer Hervé Guibert, whose death she learns about at the beginning of the trip, when she takes off from Orly Airport. No Sex Last Night reconnects with the elegiac tradition, the roots of which Dante laid out in the Vita Nova, a story of love and mourning written in the vernacular, forming the basis of modern Western literature. The film, constructed as a mirror image from two antagonistic points of view, was released in two different versions: one, transferred to 35mm and distributed in theaters (No Sex Last Night), and the other, titled Double Bind, intended for exhibition.
This film is part of the program Carte Blanche at Centre Pompidou.
“We hadn’t been living together for more than a year, but our relationship had worsened to such an extent that we had stopped talking to one another altogether. I dreamed of marrying him. He dreamed of making movies. To get him to travel across America with me, I suggested that we make a film during the trip. He agreed. Our absence of communication gave us the idea of equipping ourselves with separate cameras, making them the sole confidantes of our respective frustrations and secretly telling them all the things we were unable to say to each other. Having established the rules, on January 3, 1992, we left New York in his silver Cadillac and Headed for California.” – Sophie Calle
Starting in the late 1970s, Sophie Calle developed a body of work inspired by autobiography, using photography, film, text, and installations to create playful and melancholic autofictions. In these works, she addresses intimacy, encounters, desire, absence, mourning, and memory, often in the descriptive style of reportage or inventory. In 1992, with Gregory Shephard, the man she loved, the artist embarked on a road movie journey from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States, headed to Las Vegas, where they planned to get married. The film presents the intertwined viewpoints of the two protagonists, who film each other using video cameras over the course of their three-week trip, inside their Cadillac and in the many motels they stop at. “We each speak almost exclusively to our cameras because our relationship had deteriorated to the point where we no longer spoke to each other. Lack of dialogue, lack of technique — everything stemmed from that.” Each morning, Sophie Calle records a shot of an unmade bed while her voice says the words: “No Sex Last Night.” At the end of the trip, their marriage in Las Vegas marks the end of their relationship. Thus, No Sex Last Night is the narrative of a mourning: that of her relationship with her lover, but also the mourning of her friend, writer Hervé Guibert, whose death she learns about at the beginning of the trip, when she takes off from Orly Airport. No Sex Last Night reconnects with the elegiac tradition, the roots of which Dante laid out in the Vita Nova, a story of love and mourning written in the vernacular, forming the basis of modern Western literature. The film, constructed as a mirror image from two antagonistic points of view, was released in two different versions: one, transferred to 35mm and distributed in theaters (No Sex Last Night), and the other, titled Double Bind, intended for exhibition.
| Director | Sophie Calle, Greg Shephard |
| Script | Sophie Calle, Greg Shephard |
| Editing | Michael Penhallow |
| Music | Pascal Comelade |
Session
• Cinéma du Musée - Auditorium Maxwell-Cummings
Sunday, march 16, 2025, 08:00 p.m. — 09:26 p.m.
Production
Sophie Calle
Born in Paris in 1953, Sophie Calle sets off on a long journey around the world in the early 70s. It was during a stay in California in 1978 that she took her first “vocationless” photographs: tombs inscribed “Father” and “Mother”. She had just discovered what might “please her father”. On her return to Paris, she began to follow strangers in the street, a controlled drift through the city, which she embellished with photographs and texts, recorded in notebooks. Sophie Calle’s work could thus be likened to that of the artists of the 60s and 70s, when the status of the photographic image was concerned with the trace, the objective proof of their experiences and performances. In fact, her work is closer to the narrative art of the same period. In the ’80s, Sophie Calle embarked on a specific path, one that gives pride of place to affect and feeling. The artist constructs rules and rituals with the aim of improving her life, restoring its existential dimension. In the form of installations, photographs, stories, videos and films, Sophie Calle has, for over twenty years, been constructing situations in which she stages herself autobiographically and according to precise rules. In 2007, Sophie Calle represented France at the Venice Biennale.
Biographical notes provided by the film production team and edited by Le FIFA’s team
Biographical notes provided by the film production team and edited by Le FIFA’s team
Unfinished (2005)
In the same session
Cinéma du Musée - Auditorium Maxwell-Cummings
Sunday, march 16, 2025, 08:00 p.m.
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