Equestrian
Issue #2 - July 2017
PROFILE
Pierre E. Genecand
THE RIDER NEVERENDING PASSION
Photography by Amélie Bès
Page 13
STORY
Kevin Staut
Kevin Staut and Elky Van Het Indihot HDC (Photo Courtesy of CSIO Roma/M.Proli)
Page 29
PORTFOLIO
International Jumping Riders Club
Scott Brash (UK) Photography Fabio Petroni/IJRC
Page 33
WISHLIST
Sleek Amazon
White gold bangle, Roberto Coin
Page 17
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There is something restless in young Brady Jandreau’s past. A crazy wild horse appears to him in his dreams and then gallops away, leaving him alone with his scars and his memories. Brady is an ex rodeo star who suffers a serious head injury, after a grave fall from a horse, and is thus forced to stay away from action, far from danger, far from himself. He must start living again, before he can begin dreaming again. Recently presented in Cannes, The Rider is a beautiful surprise. A film which, starting from the autobiographical story of this boy, who plays himself in the film, manages to draw a sincere universal parable, that of accepting one’s limits and painful redemption. The talented Chinese director Chloé Zhao, who has lived in America for many years, succeeds in her mission to let Brady’s autobiography and the Western genre travel along two separate storylines, which are destined inevitably to meet. When the boy watches films of his fall on YouTube, his smartphone gives us legendary images of the golden era, a Low Definition which invades the screen creating dialogue between close ups and the hand-held camera typical of American indie cinema.
Brady Jandreau in The Rider (Photo Courtesy of Protagonist Pictures)
To start dreaming again, Brady must accept the challenge of his (mainly internal) pain and garish scar, to get close to horses again and start training them again, in that long (and very beautiful) courtship which leads an animal to trust a human. Thus, the next ride out on the prairie assumes the connotations of a vibrant return to the genre. The Rider is a film made of little things, the necessary ones. Brady’s repressed pain is only released with his younger sister, who has social difficulties, and with his old rodeo partner who is now paralysed. So, Brady slowly becomes closer to his loved ones and the film follows his footsteps respectfully, often in silence, succeeding literally in curing his wounds with the opening to the Western, which also marks an emotional connection with the collective imagination of all those in the audience.