The new feature film by Ladj Ly (46), successor to his Oscar nominee Les Miserables (2019), again set in a suburb of Paris. This time the focus is not on police violence, but on one of the underlying causes of discontent, the poor housing in some neighborhoods.
Les Indesirables is not, however, the only French film this month that highlights painful inequality in French society; little is often achieved of the ideal of liberté, égalité, fraternité. It is remarkable that these French makers package their sometimes harsh and committed commentary in stories that do not feel like pamphlets, but like a drama in which tensions slowly rise (Les Indesirables), a poignant tragedy about (surrogate) parenthood (Ama Gloria) or a mildly melancholic ode to public service (A profession seriously).
They fit within a politicized film culture. In recent years, French films have increasingly been semi-documentary or based on news, often asking questions about impoverishment and tensions within multicultural society, looking critically at the role of the state or searching for deeper historical causes.
In the banlieue
Les Indesirables is the most explicit indictment to come out this week. Ly starts his film with a moving scene that immediately contains the core of his film. Residents of a dilapidated mega-flat in a fictional banlieue try to get a coffin containing the deceased body of the grandmother of main character Haby (Anta Diaw) down from the sixth floor. The elevator in the building has been broken for years, as have the lighting in the graffiti-covered hallways. Aided by mobile phone calls, the coffin has to be pushed over railings and around bends, past bicycles and prams. Residents live and die in these ‘ten-storey favelas’, their ‘home’ is a dilapidated hell.
In Ly’s drama, the team of the new mayor, the inexperienced and ignorant pediatrician Pierre Forges (Alexi Manenti), wants to demolish the building where Haby’s family lives. Everyone has to move to new homes. That sounds nice, but the new housing is unsuitable for the large families from the original apartment. The residents who receive only a small compensation for apartments that they have paid off for years feel neglected. It sparks anger among a younger generation, like Haby and her hot-tempered friend Blaze.
Films about the problems in the French suburbs are not completely new: sledgehammer blow LaHaine dates back to 1995. But Ladj Ly brought his Les Miserables the genre to a new height in 2019. Ly, self-taught and raised in the Parisian banlieue, bought a camera at the age of seventeen and then started documenting the neighborhoods in which he lived; he made, among other things, a short documentary about the 2005 riots.
In his fiction films he creates images and characters that feel raw and nuanced at the same time. Ly’s banlieue residents, but also the representatives of the state with whom they are in conflict, are tragic, colorful, witty and angry at the same time. And they comment on each other. As in a scene in Les Indesirables, in which a woman points out to her Arabic-only speaking partner that he would have been better off studying than hitting on her, playing dominoes and drinking tea. Then he could have done the paperwork about their housing benefit himself.
Although in Les Indesirables Although ‘the bad guys’ feel a little less nuanced than Ly’s first film – Mayor Forges hardens very quickly when his wife’s car is vandalized – the film still manages to raise poignant problems in an entertaining way. This is also due to the great cast with many veterans Les Miserables.
Inequality
In France, the fear of disintegration seems even greater than elsewhere in Europe, with the radical right never far from power, mass unrest, a deep divide between city and countryside and banlieues that can simply explode. This may make it harder to ignore the fact that the modern world is unequal, unjust and volatile.
Ladj Ly illustrated this with his own experiences, but in recent years filmmakers who enter the profession through elite film schools such as La Fémis have often tended to make politically colored films about what threatens and holds society together. The French cultural elite and subsidy providers have also been awakened in recent decades, including by the devastating riots of 2005.
A film this week that exposes less explicit, but no less painful inequality in contemporary French society Ama Gloria. The solo directorial debut of former La Fémis student Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq (44) is moving as a story about the love between six-year-old white Cléo (Louise Mauroy-Panzani) and her black Cape Verdean daughter. well well or nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego), but also hits hard notes. Gloria is a surrogate mother for Cléo because the girl’s real mother has died and her father has little time. When Gloria’s own mother dies, she must return to her native country to care for her biological children, whom she left behind to earn money. Because they miss each other so much, Cléo then spends a last summer with Gloria in Cape Verde.
It provides a moving and bittersweet coming-of-age for the young girl who discovers her well well also has a life of its own. It is confronting for viewers to see what Gloria had to leave behind for a better future for herself and her own children. The film hits like an emotional hammer blow due to the great acting of Mauroy-Panzani and the way in which the camera is constantly on the girl’s skin. You are fully immersed in her world and the range of emotions that rush through her child’s head, from intense joy to pure despair.
Like Ly’s screenplay, Amachoukeli-Barsacq’s is based on her own experience and that of actress Ilça Moreno Zego. Amachoukeli-Barsacq himself had a Portuguese well well who left unexpectedly when she was about six years old, Ilça Moreno Zego left three children behind in Cape Verde to be looked after in Paris.
A weathered film, but that is also thanks to the craftsmanship of Amachoukeli-Barsacq. By letting moviegoers see through the eyes of a myopic, white and narcissistic toddler, Amachoukeli-Barsacq adds an extra layer to relationships that date back to colonial times and still continue today. There are many things that Cléo does not see or does not want to see. But they are indeed there.
A serious profession
A third committed French feature film released this month focuses on the French school system, A profession seriously. It is entertaining but substantively the least interesting of the three. The tragicomedy with a star-studded cast such as François Cluzet (Intouchables) and Adèle Exarchopoulos (La vie d’Adele) follows high school teachers. The film taps into the French trend of documentaries and feature films that pay tribute to public services – doctors, teachers, judges, care providers – such as the winner of the 2023 Berlinale Sur L’Adamant. At a school with a diverse student population, we see novice teachers and veterans doing their best, but sometimes the system undermines their good intentions. For example, young math teacher Benjamin (Vincent Lacoste) is intimidated by a student who has failed due to cheating. Benjamin does not want the boy to be expelled from school, as that would jeopardize his future. But after accusations about pushing during the confrontation between teacher and student, this is no longer in his hands.
Despite the good intentions A profession seriously not really. Maybe because director Thomas Lilti gives the friendships and love affairs in the staff room almost as much attention as the damaged future of an adolescent? Or because he’s too nice to his characters? Ladj Ly and Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq do not handle their main characters with kid gloves, and that is precisely why they feel more realistic. A profession seriously feels like a somewhat good version of it Enter Les Murs, the portrait of a teacher and his Parisian class from 2008, a classic of committed French cinema. And partly based on the experiences of protagonist and real teacher François Bégaudeau.
All three films do not feel defeatist, despite the numerous issues they address. When young Haby is asked who she is during her fight against Forges and for improvements in the neighborhood, she states: “Je suis une Française d’aujourd’hui.” This is about the frictions in contemporary France, but shows residents who sincerely believe in the feasibility of their society. Just as you get the feeling that these makers really hope to set something in motion with their films.
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