THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – NOT TO BE MISSED
For ten years Boris Lojkine has been filming fiction, strongly tinged with reality, around the African continent. He films those who flee him (a couple of emigrants on their way to Europe in Hopein 2014), those who join him at the risk of their lives (photographer Camille Lepage in Camille2019), and today, with The Story of Souleymaneone of those who made the trip successful, but at what cost?
It takes place in Paris, and the hero of this breathtaking drama is called Souleymane. Originally from Guinea, twenty-something springs, illegal awaiting regularization: the character owes a lot to the story of his (excellent) interpreter, Abou Sangare. Three imperatives require him, which exclusively feed the plot of the film: earning something to eat, securing a roof to sleep in, preparing for his asylum application interview.
Inwardly, we will perhaps think “architectural, anti-romantic”. It’s quite the opposite. Relatively little seen and romantic at full throttle. We know the reason, which lies in the title of a canonical film: Rosetta (1999), by the Dardenne brothers. With Emilie Dequenne, in all respects, as a heroine fighting step by step against precariousness, intensified and magnified by the handheld camera. Copied since then until satiation, the film has had few followers worthy of the name. Louise Wimmer (Cyril Mennegun, 2012) was one. Souleymane in another. Hey, three titles, three names. Either films which announce the color, placing the individual at the center – or etymologically what is indivisible, in other words unique.
A very fragile balance
Added to the assurance of this integrity is one of the great virtues of this Dardenian-inspired cinema: the deliberate absence of discourse and morality. Pure behaviorism takes the spectator alongside the hero. His most trivial problems become ipso facto those of the spectator, especially when the latter understands to what extent they prove to be vital for the character.
When it comes to Souleymane, all the skill of the screenplay, which invents nothing however, consists of showing us to what extent this character’s life rests on a very fragile balance. Borrow, by going into severe debt, the identity of an aigrefin in order to be a deliveryman. Pedaling day and night with incredible timing. Run so as not to miss the bus that takes him to the emergency accommodation center. Mentally repeating all this time the supposedly credible story that another sourfin is teaching his compatriots in preparation for their asylum interview.
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