Barely recovered from (DJ) Francis. A coffee. It's gray, for a few more hours, in Arras. The morning has barely started when we plunge into the darkness of the world, with an anticipated preview.
- Fabrice du Welz – “The Maldoror File” (Preview)
Charleroi, 90s. Young girls disappear. No trace, no trail. And the police who act up by playing on the impermeability between the services. The case gets bogged down. Paul Chartier, a young idealistic gendarme with a troubled childhood, gradually becomes obsessed with the case and joins Operation Maldoror, responsible for monitoring the main suspect.
From the outset, Farbice du Welz's new film is intriguing: by its duration (nearly 2 hours 40 minutes) and by its subject. That of absolute evil, trauma of an entire country. The Dutroux affair, from which du Welz, far from simply “taking inspiration”, rehashes traumatic images in the sticky atmosphere that is his trademark.
And it must be said that, past its more or less overwhelming and more or less well digested influences (the marriage reminiscent of The Godfather or The Deer Hunter, the Zodiac-style obsession, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc.), the film impresses.
By the intense, extremely accurate and tense interpretation of the incredible Anthony Bajon (definitely one of the greatest of his generation), by his overwhelming and gloomy universe, that of Charleroi and its suburbs, filmed like an unsurpassable line and a gray cage and flat, as if evil came to incarnate itself in the silence of this dilapidated corner of Belgium, as if in this region already devastated, already in decay, “inevitably” a monster could be born.
Very quickly, however, the project betrayed its initial horizon. In disparate and forgivable strokes, then more frankly, he weighs down his scenario and his characters with useless and archetypal antics, straight out of a bestiary of B series: the hierarchical superior with the scar and the eyepatch, the explosions of trash, Jacky Berroyer's wig, the madam mother from a brothel in the 1930s, the white flares of the suffering mother (Isabelle Dalle, similar to herself), the breaks in filmic tone, Hollywood temptations (with killers with automatic weapons) or horror (the pig scene, the Tobe Hooper-style house of horror or the degenerate beatnik trend Charles Manson), etc.
This temptation of the grotesque and the gloubiboulga is embodied at its most terrible in the character of Dedieu/Dutroux, played by a Sergi Lopez (yet a superb actor) who looks like a dirty gypsy who belches and carries around his violence and his false smile… in a singing out of place Catalan accent which ends up making him comical (“Do you like sucking calipots?”). This character is a reflection of the entire film. Unnecessarily weighed down, primed rather than worrying. What remains of the monster under the hood?
These filmic monstrosities, blandly combining contrary temptations between the genre film and the chronicle, end up creating a deep feeling of unease over the entire project. Why “pretend” to reconstruct the Dutroux affair, playing on analogies of places, age of the victims, unfolding, traumatic images (incredible and disturbing reconstruction of the terrible hiding place in the cellar behind the bottle rack , a farm resembling the house of Sars), to then contaminate them with this grotesque parade? What ethics regarding the matter?
Worse: once past the arrest of Dedieu/Dutroux, the film shifts into a final Western/Revenge movie-style act completely irrelevant and out of reality which ends up posing a moral problem, both the question of individual justice which What it unfolds is adorned with a sweeping reflection on a pedophilic deep state of “all rotten”.
Failure and unease all the more damaging because, when he gets rid of his smart-ass tricks, when he finally plays his part in a minor, all it takes is a shot of a canal, a station platform, a blast furnace in the shadows or a look from Bajon so that Maldoror manages to record and embody with chilling accuracy the mechanics of an obsession, of horror and to revive them to better heal the wounds of a generation. Play it cool, Fabrice.
- Goran Paskaljević – “The America of Others” (Retrospective and guest of honor: Miki Manoljovic)
And after the rain the good weather: the year 2024 is also the occasion for a generous tribute (masterclass, cross-disciplinary programming) to the one who best symbolizes the cinema of former Yugoslavia in the West, the very great Miki Manojlović, favorite actor of Kusturica and many others.
Judge for yourself: “Dad is on a business trip”, “Underground”, “Black Cat, White Cat”, “Promise Me”, “On the Milky Road”, but also “Tito and Me”, “Irina Palm” , not to mention appearances at Ozon (“Criminal Lovers”), Danis Tanovic (“L’enfer”), Beinex (“Mortel transfer”), etc.
On a scenario by Gordan Mihić (“Black cat, white cat”, “the time of the gypsies”, well, well, or “Balkan express”), here are Alonso (Tom Conti) and Bayo (Miki Manoljović), two emigrants running limping towards the American dream. Exiled as much from their country as from New York, which they observe from the shores and dreams of Long Island, Miki survives as best he can by doing manual jobs, staying in a dingy room in the bar/restaurant that Alonso runs and on which silently watches over a blind mother (Maria Casares, whose last role is).
Life goes by, in a kind of joy despite the difficulties. We do what we can, in mutual aid and friendship, observing from the corner of our eyes a beautiful young Iranian woman, having her aches and pains treated by the Chinese community whose windows overlook the bar.
However, two contrary movements occur which will turn everything upside down: Alonso's mother wants to return to Spain to die. And Miki's family, without warning him, decides to join him because there, in the heart of former Yugoslavia, his youngest daughter is dying from not seeing her father.
From pitfalls to mourning, will Alonso and Bayo manage to keep their politeness of despair, this laughter that heals everything? Can the dream continue to respond to the drama?
It is a little miraculous nugget that the festival invites us to on this gray day, a luminous bubble lit by the beautiful work of Giorgos Arvantis (Angelopoulos's appointed cinematographer, sorry) to which the newly restored copy that we see in exclusivity in Arras pays superb tribute. A colorful bittersweet farandole perfectly matched to the theme of Andrew Dickson (who regularly works with Mike Leigh), a fabulous flight of oboe which responds to the tireless movements of the two displaced people.
We could then elaborate at length on the beauty of the duo with the tragic and physical humor of Bayo/Alonso and glorify the quality of interpretation of Conti and Miki, whose body, facial expressions and movements say as much as the words, in a work somewhere between burlesque cinema and the circus universe whose approaches and absurdities recall the glorious hobos, from Chaplin to the lost ones of Beckett (Vladimir and Estragon, or the character of the mother whose glasses are reminiscent of those of Hamm at the end of the game).
We could also applaud this quality of tone, this very Slavic way of reacting to drama with resourcefulness and laughter or fantasy (cock breeding), while allowing beauty to breathe, even if it means tinting it with drama (the scene). of the well, in particular) with a production which, like the characters, is written with lightness, “as in passing”. This simple shot demonstrates this: during a funeral (carried out, all the same, in a pickup truck with a gigantic cow), the camera pans. It reveals, for just a few seconds, at the top of the frame, the towers of Manhattan. And above, separated by an almost perfect line, hundreds of tombs. That of those who left everything to dream of America and allow these tricks and whose side the film takes.
These discreet and impressionistic touches sum up this lovely project as tightrope as its heroes, seeking in each sequence a balance between burlesque and what it covers.
Because “The America of Others” hides many tears: regrets, a missing child, a story that is passing away, an impossible love, a betrayed future and that melancholy that never leaves those who have left everything behind. He speaks about it with a crazy tenderness, which is all the more relevant today, without unnecessary pathos, without a stunted social horizon supported.
Of course, the film is not perfect, and it suffers from some lengths, notably during his exile on another border (let's say no more) and the painful consequences of his return on his hero, and he sometimes flirts with the right feeling. But this “good” is also his strength, and Goran Paskaljević, too, plays on it and constantly denounces it to us. Of course, everything is fake, of course everything is decoration, he says, like the well or the goat that we bring back like an artifact. Of course, everyone is out of tune and out of place, who could be at this dirty backyard. But this hiatus is precisely the heart of the film.
It's the story of people who don't find their place, in their country, in their family, in their fatherhood. It's the story of people chasing ghosts and regrets. But who live as long as they can dream. It's the kind of humble and reassuring film that we dream of passing on to those we love, and that we would like to introduce to everyone (why not on the big screen again?). What a discreet little gem.
© All rights reserved. Culturopoing.com is an entirely voluntary site (Association under the 1901 law) and respects copyright, respecting the work of the artists that we seek to promote. The photos visible on the site are there for illustrative purposes only, not for commercial exploitation purposes and are not the property of Culturopoing. However, if a photograph has nevertheless escaped our control, it will be removed immediately. We are counting on the kindness and vigilance of each reader – anonymous, distributor, press officer, artist, photographer.
Please contact Bruno Piszczorowicz ([email protected]) or Olivier Rossignot ([email protected]).
Related News :