Director: Giulio Pavesi
Running time: 4mins
It’s been almost a year since we last reviewed a music video which was anything better than mediocre. Without You has ensured that wait goes on, with the most infuriatingly non-committal display of unimaginative lip-syncing this category has ever featured.
Director Giulio Pavesi’s vision for Franco Rivers’ track consists of static shots of the singer meekly mouthing his lyrics to camera, against a series of isolated urban backdrops. It is a common tactic of low-budget music videos, used to promote buy-in of an act that might not be particularly cool. Stand them in front of some colourful graffiti, and they might seem less dull by proxy. Vaguely suggest that they live a secluded bohemian life in an abandoned rail-carriage, and the audience might start to see them as an edgy social outsider.
These ploys rarely work to that end, because however much the graffiti pops, however much rusted mystique the carriage possesses, the filmmaker still has to focus a camera on someone with all the charisma of Chris Martin or Cheryl. Rivers is very much working with those same limitations, but his director makes it even less likely for him to pull it off, by leaving a bus-stop sign in frame on multiple occasions. Not quite so isolated as we were led to believe…
Beyond the decorative urban isolation of the backgrounds, Pavesi does not have any other tricks in his bag, with which to engage the audience. Instead, he leaves his camera to stand idle on Rivers as he pretends to sing in front of the expanse of water between Amsterdam’s Station Centraal and the city’s redeveloped Noord district.
The polished, corporate look of the nightmarish new buildings in the distance somewhat undermines the attempt at displaying Rivers as some kind of distant hermit, who has removed himself from the trappings of modernity. At the same time, the wind – which can really blow up a storm there – barely ruffles Rivers’ curls as he stands in the lower-left of the screen, looking like a tourist showing his Instagram story a particularly ugly new build he has stumbled upon.
“I don’t want to stay alone”, Rivers’ faltering vocals declare – a sentiment which would have been better paired with imagery from a more wintery day. At least if the waves were choppy, the wind was pushing him about, and the rain were soaking him, it would complement the song – rather than the pleasant, warm summer’s afternoon he is apparently suffering through here. And I understand scheduling around the weather like that might be impossible in somewhere like California. But if you are going to film a music video for a sad song, nine months out of the year, Amsterdam’s climate is perfect. Just don’t do it from the start of June until the end of August.
As for the music itself, I have said before that I am not a music critic. Indy Film Library’s music video category is aimed at critiquing the filmmaking, and how it works to emphasise the song it is representing. And let’s just say, that’s fortunate for Rivers.
The one thing I will add about it, however, is that at no point does it convince as a ‘live’ performance. Every organic element of the recording, every scrap of human performance, is ironed out – it is a sterile, studio sound that would not be believable to a lip-sync showcase in this remote outdoor location, even if it were properly synchronised with the movements of Rivers’ face and body.
Franco Rivers has also recorded a live version of this song for the Amsterdam Boat Sessions – in which he sings from the top of a long boat cruising through the city’s famous canals. Because of the lack of invention on display in Without You’s official video, even this minimalist approach better serves to promote the song. Not only is the image construction in the session immediately more interesting (Rivers sitting amid the beautiful shadowy contrast from the vibrant, green trees on the banks of the canal), but it is also imbued with a modicum of dynamism that is utterly lacking in Pavesi’s video – because even if the performance is still a little limp, or restricted by nervous energy, at least the boat is moving.