AfterLike thieves (in the east), The Great Waves (to the west)and nowThe continent drift (south)We wonder what will happen north of Lionel Bayer's filmography. His last film – presented at the Directors' Fortnight of the 75th Cannes Film Festival and currently available on DVD – offers his audience a clever mix of genres, which it is high time to (re)discover.
Pangee
At the base was a small Swiss director, originally from Lausanne, starting with a first production in 1999 (a short titledCute to chew) and alternating since documentaries and fictions. In 2006,Lionel Baierbegan his tetralogy of whichThe continent drift (south)The first two were in Poland and Portugal, the third under the overwhelming sun of Sicily. Berier promises us one more, this time heading north, entitledKeek (north),taking place in Scotland and coming out in the coming years.
The idea of his film was born in 2014, he tells, while the migration crisis affects the European coasts. The director then made the trip to Italy and Greece, to see with his own eyes the fate reserved for migrants after their trying crossing the Mediterranean. A history of Europe, of course, from a Franco-German couple on a visit, was grafted into it by a family Melo. Anyway, not necessarily a light soil for a comedy... This is without counting on Lionel Bayer's inventiveness.
Plate Tectonic
Nathalie, performed by the always so greatIsabelle Carré, is sent to Sicily by the European Union. Among his missions, organize the imminent visit of the Macron-Merkel couple to a migrant camp... A highly symbolic meeting, during which leaders want to evacuate any risk of slipping. Navigating between communicators and political wills who wish to transform the camp into a real window of immigration, Nathalie falls on her son, Albert (Theodore Pellerin), an activist with a human rights NGO. He who had cut the bridges for years chose the worst moment to resurface...
The Fosse des Mariannes
We were talking about the abyss, and this is where she resides. In short, Nathalie's story collides with that of Europe: couple pulling the cover from them, children disappointed... The metaphor is easy. Berier uses his fictional narrative to give body about him. He, the documentary artist, personifies his subject, breathes in his actors, gives him flesh. But far from a simple and bald allegory, he draws up, by taking off poncifs of a genre to embrace a plurality of tones, an acidic portrait of European administration and political dehumanization. They are no longer human beings who land on the European coasts, but soon extras of a « village Pierre & Vacances » too clean to the taste of the communicators of the Elysée, determined to have perfect images to bring back in their suitcases.
Cruel, funny, sometimes frankly absurd, you can blameThe continent drift (south)to give up for a while his subject to focus too much on this mother's family melody who found a son long neglected. A grievance that is immediately forgotten, as he offers us one of the most beautiful scenes of the film: crushed by the Sicilian sun, Nathalie and her son will fall on the village of Gibellina. Completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1968, the artist Burri seized the landscape to lock the remaining ruins under concrete sarcophagi, drawing the old contour of the streets of the village. Highly poetic, Bayer's camera sublimates its two actors lost in this maze symbolizing the fragility of our constructions, bricks and society. The tectonic rapprochement between Africa and Europe, on the one hand causing war and horror, and on the other there is a flagrant loss of identity and humanity.
Very nice stock of the year 2022,The continent drift (south)is a real sweet bitter surprise, to discover today in physical format or in VOD, promising a much needed summer puff in this time of year.
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 86 min
Release Date: February 07, 2023
Video format: 576p/25 - 1.85
Soundtrack: French Dolby Digital 5.1 (and 2.0)
SubtitlesFrench
You sold me. Thanks for the discovery.
I hope you like it! (The truth is that I am here a mole at the service of Confederation to sell you Swiss films, but no matter what!).