Blue is the Warmest Colour. Review.

On lâche rien!

Abdellatif Kechiche is the director of La Faute à Voltaire (200))  and La Graine et le Mulet (2007) and Vénus noire (2010). All three are moving dramas, with a political message.

The first, about a young Tunsian ‘clandestine’ in France. It takes  its title from the song by the street urchin Gravoche, in Victor Hugos’ Les Misérables as he fights and dies on the Paris Barricades defending liberty in the 183o Revolution

« Je suis tombé par terre,
C’est la faute à Voltaire,
Le nez dans le ruisseau,
C’est la faute à Rousseau. »

The second, is a beautiful story of a mixed French and North African family in Sète (Occitan Seta). The main character, Monsieur Beiji, opens a restaurant after a lifetime working on a naval dockyard. The lives and hardships of the working class families in the picture, a true ‘métissage’ of cultures, are portrayed with enduring warmth.

Vénus noire is about the “Hottontot Venus”. It is tale of colonial exploitation as a young African woman, exhibited like an animal in a London freak show. It has,as far as I aware, not had a proper release in Britain.

La Vie d’Adèle , Chapitres 1 & 2, in English,  Blue is the Warmest Colour,  won the  Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival.

The jury and its its president, Steven Spielberg, insisted the prize was given not only to  Abdellatif Kechiche, but also by his two young stars, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos.

The prize was well merited.

Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is a lycée student, who, after unsatisfactory fling with a male fellow lycéen, begins to discover that she is attracted to other girls. An exchange of glances in the street, a “coup de foudre” (love at first sight), with blue-dyed hair Emma (Léa Seydoux ) leads to  passionate embraces and deep affection.

The backdrop, gay bars, a Pride event,  and a scene in which the young students join a stirring demonstration against the privatisation of education (just in front of the CGT), indicates a wider cultural and political context.

Emma is a student of Beau arts, while Adèle, after a Literary ‘Bac’ becomes a teacher in an école maternelle  The film is the story of their relationship. Intellectually Adele does not integrate into her partner’s artistic world. Other tensions grow…

The author of the bande dessinée (graphic novel)  Le bleu est une couleur chaude (Glénat),  Julie Maroh, on which the film is based, has questioned the authenticity of the lesbian sex scenes.

The two actresses have accused  Kechiche of controlling their performances to the point of harassing them. He has defended himself, though in declaring that his stars give “toute une existence” to the role one can see a potential difficulty.

Blue is the warmest Colour remains simply wonderful.

Long, at 179 minutes, the time does not drag for instant – though I could have done without the subtitles (though I generally managed to ignore them  into American Valley Girl slang.

Apart from its artistic qualities Blue is a political statement in favour of gay rights.

As the student demonstrators in the film shouted, On lâche rien!

A translation of this (shouted at scores of French demos) could be, “We Won’t Give A Fucking Inch!“

Couscous (la Graine et le Mulet): DVD Review.

 

La Graine et le Mulet (Couscous) is now available on DVD * . It’s one of the most important films of 2008 and won a French César (Oscar) in that year.  Set in the Mediterranean Port of Sète, it follows the  crises of everyday life, and the joys, of a warm unselfconscious family. Nothing special. The Director, Abdellatif Kechiche, says he wanted to show a milieu of the French working class, of North African,  Midi, and more recent immigrant, origin, as “ordinary“. 

This friendly and roving clan is the backdrop of a solid drama. This unfolds around the plight of Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares)  a sixty-year old shipyard worker. He is a Tunisian immigrant of long-standing. He is devastated to find himself dismissed as work dries up. Is delocalisation of boat-building and repair at fault (that he is sacked as ‘un français’ when they can get the job done cheaper elsewhere)? Clearly it is his age that counts – badly. But the background is the death of commercial fishing. The accelerating transformation of Mediterranean ports into marinas and tourist resorts  is happening in many other seas.

Redundancy money does not go very far. Beniji reacts dismissively to suggestions that he – as was the dream (rarely  fulfilled) of many North Africans,  returns  ‘au bled’ (back ‘home’). Wracked by feelings of impotence, he flounders a while to find a way to keep going in Sète.  Scenes from the less than happy married lives of some of his family heighten the tension. But Beniji’s quiet dignity – his principle that he wants to leave a decent legacy (achievement, not money) – wins out.

His former wife, Souad (Bouraouïa Marzouk), cooks a brilliant fish couscous (hence the Mulet). At one of those long extravagant diners shared by the French working class it has pride of place. North Africans and French, drink, and talk – as they really do, not as in some kind of diversity training course – about their different languages and culture.  The food gives Beniji inspiration. Helped by Rym,(Hafsia Herzi) the daughter of his present companion Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), he sets about creating a floating restaurant offering the speciality. Rym carries the plans forward.  They face a  frosty (realistic) reception from banks and local bureaucrats (one emphasising that ‘here in France’ we do such and such). As is the way in film the restaurant gets a grand Opening Night: the occasion for the final dramas of La Graine et le Mulet. Do not under any circumstances miss the Belly Dance.

La Graine et le Mulet has traces of Ken Loach’s slices of working class life (without the didactic tone). Herzi’s performance as Rym has been described as ‘fizzing’: I’d say it’s guts electrified. There are tastes of sexual conflict, in the raw way of the world. There is a lot of other rich fare here. The couscous meal has echos of the glorious feast in Renoir’s Partie de Campagne (working class Parisians escaping to the countryside). One side (the vistor’s ) of Sète is a kind of escape; reminding us of Georges Brassens, and a feed by the Mediterranean. 

Abdellatif Kechiche  shows that  there are vibrant working class communities in Sète still. Even if their employment is threatened. Or that the Parti Communiste lost in 2001 to the UMP. One might call the picture soft-focus realism. If the camera shots weren’t so sharp. It is a truly humanist  film, with a fine balance between optimism and realism. As a celebration of ordinary working class people’s lives, and the genuine mixture of cultures and individuals, La Graine et le Mulet is up there amongst the greats.

* DVDs are the only way we at the Tendance can see the latest World Cinema since Ipswich Council leased  off the Film Theatre to a ‘businessman’ more interested in Manchester United than film. They do have the advantage of an option where you can turn the subtitles off.