In this 5-minute film shown as a loop, the camera follows the wanderings of Père Coco [Father Coco], who roams about, finding things as he goes that indicate his path, from morning to night.

Throughout the sequence, the protocol remains the same: an object, placed on the ground, is shown in close-up, then Père Coco enters the shot and picks it up. By filming the sequence in stop-motion, Jordi Colomer transforms his character into a puppet that suddenly and unpredictably appears in the frame, with jerky movements resembling a mechanical doll that render his presence strange or even disturbing.

Père Coco uses and carries away all and sundry. His steps are guided by his discoveries, as though the forgotten objects of strangers dictated the meaning of his trajectories. There are few encounters involved, besides a few passers-by and a child who waves goodbye through a train window, as though Père Coco's reality only existed in the deserted world of this port city, far removed from childhood.

This quest is the fruit of chance, using objects garnered from the lost-and-found office in Saint Nazaire, where Jordi Colomer was able to borrow the stock from 2001 for the purposes of his film. This strange character plays with these objects of little value. He puts on a tie, dons a vermilion helmet, and fills his bag with all of the forgotten items – things that have been lost, but also rejected from society.

 The allusion to Father Christmas in the title and this reverse gesture of gathering as opposed to distributing transforms the character into a "Père Fouettard" [Whipping Father], condemned to errancy, gathering up the surplus of a careless society. His steps lead him to a wharf where he dances alone with a Barbie doll in front of an illuminated cargo ship, far from the party. His solitude and marginality are fearsome, like the figure of Père Fouettard, who brandished his poverty and exclusion in the face of the Father Christmas myth, while rejecting the codes of the consumer society.

Patricia Maincent