Astonishing success as this first low-budget film Thirty-sevenwhich starts slowly as a genre film to surprise us by going towards… something deeper. Recommended !
Thirty-seven (the real title of the film, as it appears in the credits, and not this braggart and clumsy 37: the shadow and the prey invented for the poster) begins very, very well: we accompany a tormented heavy goods truck driver with suicidal impulses in his work day, an ordinary day with the friends we meet, the conversations with the office, the not easy customers. Some will find this start too slow, more “French cinema” than “American thriller”, or even “Netflix thriller”: too bad for them, Arthur Molard takes his time to help us discover a world that we encounter every day on the roads, on which our daily life depends, but which we do not know. And to build a complex, ambiguous character, to whom we will become attached, which is obviously the basis of any film emotionally involving its viewer.
When Thirty-seven enters its thriller section, bordering on a “genre film”, with the appearance of a hitchhiker who is a priori charming but in fact dangerous (Melody Siminaexcellent…), we fear that the film will get bogged down in an agreed plot, with The Hitcher as a model. But the scenario of Molard is smarter, and above all deeper than that: while the tension continues to rise – with great efficiency in the narration, even if the staging is not yet – it is a first film – at the top, the real subject of the film gradually appears. A moral subject, a political subject since, extremely rare in “mainstream” cinema, it confronts one of the greatest challenges of our current society: the confrontation between a working proletariat now on the verge of impoverishment, of social downgrading, and an immigrant population increasingly “threatening” to him because of its desperation. This is not nothing, it gives real value to this Thirty-seven which easily goes beyond its status as a “small film”, and also ends on a magnificent scene, perhaps offering the hope of a light in this very, very dark story. “ Welcome » (welcome, in Portuguese) is in fact the last intelligible word of the film, and it is difficult not to be upset by it.
Well, overly rational spectators will be able to criticize certain weaknesses of the scenario: the confrontation with the police and its lack of consequences, the presence of a young Brazilian woman in the middle of a group of African migrants, the lack of initiative of “Saint -Vincent” who we imagine on several occasions could emerge from the nightmare he is experiencing… But these are ultimately unimportant dross compared to the strength of the story that is told to us, and above all, compared to the beautiful ambiguity of characters whose ultimately we will not fully know the “truth”.
Bravo !
Eric Debarnot
