We are in 1953, Fernand and Hélène meet, in the Paris region, and fall in love. She is of Polish origin, and he lives in Algeria, where he was born, 27 years earlier, and they settled in Algiers. A communist and anti-colonialist activist, he espoused the cause of the FLN, and ended up guillotined for “attempted sabotage” in 1957.
If the Algerian war has already been the subject of several films over time, here it is not the armed combat or the bombs that interest the director Hélier Cisterne, who adapts the novel of the same name by Joseph Andras, published in 2016, but this intimate story of a couple shaken by conflict.
“It’s the story of a couple who somewhere embodies certain aspects of this conflict, of this tearing apart of the Algerian war, she is wary of violence, he will slip little by little, he will plunge into a commitment much more ‘in action’, at the risk of violence, emphasizes the director, and both recount two feelings, two situations of what it is to be caught in a torn between Algeria and France. But we made this film above all because it was the intimate story of a couple.”
The Luxembourg actress Vicky Krieps plays the role of Hélène, and it is Vincent Lacoste who lends his still youthful features to Fernand Iveton. He is excellent in this role, more serious than those usually offered to him.
“In fact, explains Vincent Lacoste, I’m the same age as him, but that’s what’s quite surprising, it’s that he looked older than his age, like many young people in the fifties. It interested me immediately obviously because the role is different from what I am generally offered, and a role that I had never had the opportunity to do.
“The idea of playing someone who existed and had such a tragic life can be a little scary at first, but then I thought the story was so beautiful, in the sense that it was important. to tell.”
Actor Vincent Lacosteat franceinfo
Before the end credits of the film, a text indicates that the Minister of Justice at the time, François Mitterrand, had refused Iveton’s request for amnesty, as if to remind that this story is not so distant – in time – of ours.
Another form of intimacy in theaters this week, with the documentary In U.S, of the prolix Régis Sauder, already author of I liked living there on Cergy-Pontoise in the fall, which this time finds high school students from Marseille, 10 years after presenting them to us in its film We, Princesses of Cleves in 2011. Young people from the northern districts of Marseille, educated at the Lycée Diderot, have become young adults, mothers for some, with a job for the most part, and often politicized.
Régis Sauder was the guest of franceinfo this week:
“I find them extremely courageous. I am very impressed by their strength, their combativeness. Armelle says for a moment in the film: ‘My life is a succession of struggles’. Fighting to find a job, to find accommodation, we can’t all say that. And to be able to stand up without anger, when you’ve overcome all these obstacles, it’s quite remarkable.”
And with this seemingly simple but often moving documentary, Régis Sauder also portrays a generation in search of landmarks and that the Covid has led, consciously or not, to choose care and/or service professions. public.
Finally, we radically change genre, atmosphere, nationality or even budget, with the third film of the week, Ambulancethe latest feature film by American Michael Bay, the story of a bank robbery in the center of Los Angeles that goes wrong, forcing the two protagonists, two brothers played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen 2 , to flee in an ambulance, with, inside, a nurse taken hostage, and an injured policeman who needs emergency treatment.
True to her style, Bay takes us on a chaotic, saturated, violent and testosterone-filled metal ballet for 2 hours and 16 minutes, with a little more finesse and humor than usual, which makes the film effective and enjoyable.