THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
We no longer need to introduce Roschdy Zem, 57, a high-flying career, actor of said diversity, who, without having had either the desire or the need to deny himself, took care to open the hatches and cultivate his art to the point of embody today one of the strongest actoral presences in French cinema. Since 2006, this actor with an elegant charisma, a well-tempered profession and an eclectic career has been directing. And no doubt he concedes here to the question of origins more than he allows himself as an actor, if only to relentlessly reduce the particular to the universal. The six films he has made to date show the color in this regard: bad faith (2006), Omar killed me (2011), Chocolate (2016)… until today filming these Mine who are his.
Autobiographical film (what happens to the main character here happened to Roschdy Zem’s younger brother), Mine installs us in an extended family. Inaugural presentation in the form of a table, under the auspices of commensality and those annoying little family nothings that we only half say to ourselves, for fear of discovering the abyss that is lurking behind them. There is Moussa (Sami Bouajila), who is recovering very, very badly from the separation from his wife. His two grown children, Amir (Carl Malapa) and Nesrine (Nina Zem, daughter of the director). His sister Samia (Meriem Serbah), who watches him like milk on fire. His two brothers Salah (Rachid Bouchareb) and Adil (Abel Jafri). Finally, the one we are always waiting for, the other brother, Ryad (Roschdy Zem), who joins his partner, Emma (Maïwenn) at the table.
In a few familiar sequences, we are more or less made aware of the dynamics, the balance of power and sentiment, the implicit stakes of this family. Moussa, dismantled from the inside, buried in himself, hesitating to reveal to those close to him a situation that he fears to make irreversible by naming it. Samia, alone in the know, devoted to an insane point, who supports him with abnegation. The brothers, not indifferent, but a little distant, each having made his life on his side.
A realistic outline
And, of course, this implicit caesura that takes with him Ryad the latecomer, who extricated himself by the force of the wrist from the modest social environment of the family by becoming a sports journalist on television and host of his own show. To whom we call in case of need, to whom we reproach in a low voice his delays and his frequent lack of response, and, through them, somewhere, the taking of distance from the rest of the family. As we can see, the autobiography does not stop at Roschdy Zem’s brother.
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