20 September 2024.
By Neptune
LES GRAINES DU FIGUIER SAUVAGE **** ( vo Persian)
I include below what I wrote about this exceptional film in my 16/8 column on the Locarno film festival. It was a huge hit in Cannes, as its director Mohammad Rasoulof had just arrived in France, having fled from Iran where he had spent months in prison and could expect far harsher punishments. The film, its director and cast, received more than 10 minutes of standing ovation at its screening and won Cannes’ Special Jury Award.
The film is about a family whose father has been given a promotion, becoming an investigative judge in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. There are obvious financial advantages to the new post, but there is also the fact that he must prove his fidelity to the government by signing the death sentences of young protesters. He is basically a good man and this weighs heavily upon his conscience. In the meantime his wife is a devoted supporter of her husband and tries to assuage his feelings of guilt, while his two daughters are aghast at the whole situation, both inside the home and outside, where a revolution is brewing because of the killing of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, by the Morality Police.
With the growing movement of “Women, Life, Liberty” as the framework of his story, Rasoulof has created a searing condemnation of the political and personal repression in his country through the slow dissolution of this family. The film is almost Shakespearean in its allegory of evil seeping into a loving, respectful home life. And he builds up the tension to a powerful finale in this long film which never feels overdone. Superbly acted and conceived, this is his most outstanding work to date.
NI CHAÎNES, NI MAÎTRE **** (vo French)
In his directorial debut, Simon Moutairou has created a commanding masterpiece about French colonialism and slavery. It’s 1759 and we are in Isle de France (today’s Mauritius), set in a sugar cane plantation run by a merciless Frenchman (Benoît Magimel) who treats his slaves with unrelenting cruelty.
The film is an agonising but important study of the horrors of how the supposedly civilised white man dealt with the blacks he enslaved, and a rare historical look at French colonialism. Director Moutairou, who is French but originally from Benin, has always wanted to make a film about slavery, as Americans have done with films such as “12 Years A Slave” or “Django Unchained”.
This one tells of the bravery of one slave daughter (Anna Diakhere Thiandoum) who can no longer stand the brutality on the plantation and runs away, with her dead mother’s spirit guiding her through the jungle. Her father (Ibrahima Mbaye), who has been a favoured foreman up to now, of course follows suit. In pursuit of the twosome is a fabled slave huntress (Camille Cottin) and her two sons. The chase through the plains, mountains and valleys of the lush island is ruthless, but also spiritual through the slaves’ fervent yearning for freedom. The raw acting and revealing dialogue are superb, both shocking and moving. This is a grand homage to those who could no longer take such intolerable injustice and wanted to be free of chains and masters, no matter the price. Terribly tragic but so necessary – it should go to the Césars.
(Slavery was abolished in France in 1794, after the Revolution. However, it persisted in the colonies until 1848.)
LES BARBARES ***1/2 (vo French)
A few years ago…a small town in Brittany is in great excitement as it is to receive refugees from Ukraine. The inhabitants are sprucing up the town and eagerly awaiting the big arrival, with the media called in to record their humanitarian event.
But wait – too many communes around France have volunteered to take care of the Ukrainian refugees, they’re Europeans after all, our own kind. Instead, their town is getting a Syrian family. Oh, zut alors!
And so starts this seemingly light-hearted comedy, by and with Julie Delpy, which is actually a finely-tuned study of the way we look at those who are different from us. It’s her delightful but deeply felt reminder to observe our own human foibles.
With a cast including Sandrine Kiberlain and Laurent Lafitte, who play their roles to the hilt (note Lafitte’s Hitler-like haircut), this is an intelligent hoot!
It seems the French/American Julie Delpy has been in the movie business forever, both as actress and writer/director. Remember the romantic Richard Linklater trilogy (1995-2013) starting with “Before Sunrise” starring Delpy and Ethan Hawke, about a young couple meeting on a train? Now in her mid-50s, she started out as an actress in France in the late ‘70s and has been directed by such notable auteurs as Tavernier, Kieslowski and Holland. She has written and directed more than ten films herself, including this latest one. Check out her extensive Wikipedia page, for Delpy is an international artist of talent and conviction.
Run to this film – you won’t be disappointed.
SOPHIE LAVAUD – LE DERNIER SOMMET ***1/2 (vo French, English subtitles)
Superb **** Very Good *** Good ** Mediocre * Miserable – no stars
By Neptune
Neptune Ravar Ingwersen reviews film extensively for publications in Switzerland. She views 4 to 8 films a week and her aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff for readers.
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