CANAL+ – TUESDAY AUGUST 2 – 9:10 PM – FILM
Eighth feature film by Xavier Beauvois, ex-flayed alive from the North, spiritual son of one of the greatest French critics in the person of Jean Douchet, realist filmmaker with a raw tendency, retired for a few years already in Normandy, where he works (more or less) bucolic to his work, with the recent complicity of producer Sylvie Pialat, who was behind The Guardiansand finds himself in the flight of the present Albatrossfrom Baudelairean memory.
We are – after the family in North (1991), the military in Don’t forget that you are going to die (1995), cops in The Little Lieutenant (2005), the monks in men and gods (2010), women in The Guardians (2017) – with the gendarmes of a Normandy brigade. The group, with Beauvois, is always the living territory of an ideal destined to be put to the formidable test of reality.
Here, Laurent (Jérémie Renier), commander of the Etretat gendarmerie brigade. His well traced life of this good father and companion (he is about to marry the mother of his daughter), of this good policeman (to serve and defend with moderation and compassion), will know, at a crossroads of destiny, jerk matter.
Flight forward
Among the day-to-day business of the post – an overview of the ills of our society, from “ordinary” suicide from the top of the cliffs of Etretat to domestic violence, including the question, debated between gendarmes, of police violence -, the one stands out in particular. It has the face of Julien, a farmer in distress, in his forties, strong-headed, hesitating between anger and despair in the face of the administrative constraints that bring him to his knees.
For Laurent, Julien is the sign of destiny. Unless we reveal too much of the film, let’s just say that a scene of great violence and cruel irony unites rather than opposes the two men, at the end of which Laurent’s professional and private life will be suspended. , perhaps branch off, surely redefine itself. The form that this crossroads will take resembles a headlong rush.
Provisions and packing hastily made, Laurent abandons everything, starting with his family, to ” to borrow “ a friend’s boat and go to sea, far, probably as far as possible. We feel that Xavier Beauvois intends to give this eventful crossing, whose most extreme point is a severe storm, a dimension of almost religious purification. We feel, on the aesthetic level, that this breaking point is akin to a Rossellinian moment of truth.
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