Chronic. The film BAC North surprises since the pandemic is playing with the nerves of the cinema. Almost 900,000 admissions in two weeks. It’s huge and the pace does not weaken. Except that this fiction by Cédric Jimenez, centered on three cops powerless in the face of drug trafficking in the northern districts of Marseille, who flout their ethics in order to slow it down, is under attack: it would be pro-police, would reduce young people from cited to animals, would exaggerate the violence, would even play into the hands of the National Rally. The salvo proves that the “neighborhoods” will indeed be a subject of the presidential election. The way of representing them too, so many films and series forge a collective imagination.
Cédric Jimenez sees things differently. He did not want to X-ray a city, but “Show why the police, crushed by a system, slip away”. He is one of the rare French filmmakers to film “American-style”, to keep the spectator in suspense, to raise the tension, especially during a hallucinating twenty-minute scene where cops storm a building. Like in a civil war.
On July 13, at the Cannes Film Festival, Cédric Jimenez had to face criticism. Irish journalist from Agence France-Presse (AFP) Fiachra Gibbons opened the ball rolling with his feelings: he finds the film ” very strong “, but he is ” uncomfortable “ that the young people of Marseille are only ” beasts “, wondering even if he’s wrong “Vote Le Pen” after watching it.
It is true that in BAC North, beyond history, we can see this: there are areas of lawlessness in France; the police are prohibited there and risk a lot; drug traffickers are armed, always younger, and they are not afraid of anything; their words are structured by insult. Finally, separatism and the impossibility of a social contract emerge.
It did not fail. On the occasion of Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Marseille, from 1er as of September 3, Marine Le Pen tweeted: “While the president is going to do his media show, the reality is BAC North ! Go see him ! “ The filmmaker, who grew up in this difficult Marseille, for whom the solution lies in training and means, much more than through repression, and whose political ideas are far from those of the extreme right, says he is distressed, but he does not budge: “Not showing what I perceive for fear of being recovered is the choice of the worst. “ Jimenez also received a number of supporters, including that of Nicolas Mathieu, Prix Goncourt for Their children after them (Actes Sud, 2018). On his Instagram account, the writer greets a film where “The state is corrupted and the thugs are constituting themselves in institutions”. Above all, he adds that the cinema does not have to “Represent the interests of society”. On the contrary.
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