The actress and director is releasing this Wednesday The Barbariansa comedy about a Breton village forced to welcome a family of Syrian refugees while it was expecting Ukrainians.
Laughing about the reception of migrants in France without falling into clichés and without making fun of the people concerned: this is the balancing act accomplished by Julie Delpy in her new film The BarbariansA comedy in theaters this Wednesday which dares, as is rarely the case in France, to laugh at a dramatic situation.
In the village of Paimpont, the inhabitants decide in a great burst of solidarity to welcome Ukrainian refugees. But an administrative problem changes their plan and it is a Syrian family who arrives instead, in this small town in Brittany.
The inhabitants will then be torn between those who, like Joëlle the militant schoolteacher (Julie Delpy), open their arms to the refugees, and the most hostile, led by Hervé, a racist plumber and municipal councilor (Laurent Lafitte) who will try to rally the rest of the village to his cause.
Laughing Despite Tragedy
Faced with the migrant crisis, Julie Delpy wanted to tackle this subject head on to question “our own capacity to welcome”, she explains to BFMTV.com. Convinced that “we can make comedy on all subjects”, the director wanted to “laugh at our own failings”.
Evoking such a burning topic with “a certain lightness” required “a sharp writing job”, explains the director. “This kind of comedy is always on the edge. It mustn’t be too little, because otherwise it’s not funny. And if it’s too much, it’s heavy.”
The film was already in development when the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022. “We were already following Syrian refugees and we were struck by the double standards. We didn’t see the same mobilization for other countries. It was tragic, but we could make something funny out of it.”
French denial
After the controversies sparked by What have we done to God? (2014) and With open arms (2017), two successful comedies, accused of racism, French cinema keeps its distance from the subject. Based in the United States, Julie Delpy tried to escape the clichés by adapting “a form of Anglo-Saxon humor to a French film”.
“We never do self-criticism in France. The Americans and the English are more adept at that in their films. In France, more than anywhere else, there is a kind of denial of wanting to talk humorously about big (societal) problems. It’s strange. I don’t know how to explain that.”
Julie Delpy was careful, with her scriptwriters, not to make us laugh at the racist plumber’s sallies. A flaw, according to her, of several French comedies wanting to denounce racism: “We can’t laugh with him. We worked on the character in this way. The films where we laugh with this kind of character were written by racist people.”
“This character is not only racist, he is anti-Semitic without knowing it, he says condescending things to his wife, he is in a total conspiracy delirium. We can’t laugh with him,” insists the director. Especially since this character is very real and well anchored in the French landscape.
“A little hope”
At the time of the European and legislative elections, “the wolves came out of their dens,” she laments. “We saw faces that would not have dared to say it (before). It was not planned like that, even if we had known all this for years. It is terrifying. These words resonate in a different way because of these last few months.”
“If after a while there is such hatred of the foreigner, the foreigner will also rebel. That’s what happens in the film. Hate feeds hatred. That’s where we are now,” warns Julie Delpy.
But for the director and actress, The Barbarians “is not supposed to be traumatic” for the French public. “The film is supposed to do good. It’s a therapeutic film. It’s a ‘feel good movie’. I wanted to make a film with a little hope. We need that too.”
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