«Roubaix, a light», or the perfect illustration of the oxymoron

Les mercredis du cinéma - Kelly Lambiel

When you're used to presenting your work at the Cannes Film Festival Cannes, it's hardly surprising that they end up in the «arthouse» category. auteur" category. A label that fits Arnaud Desplechin's work rather well Desplechin's work, even if it is somewhat reductive. With feature films such as How I got into a fight... (my sex life), Ester Kahn, A Christmas tale or The Sentinel,the director has repeatedly demonstrated his his ability to explore different styles and registers. With Roubaix, a light, although faithful to certain themes, it is to the genre of poetic realism that he tries his hand, not with a certain virtuosity.

Poetic staging

Northern France, one Christmas Eve. Despite the December chill, the atmosphere is heavy. It's «a sticky, clammy heat», says the voice-over of inspector Louis (Antoine Reinartz). Massively used in the first images, fade-in and fade-out sketches a city and paints the face of a working class for whom time seems to stand still for whom time seems to have stood still, a forgotten class. The images are beautiful, and the music perfectly accompanies each sequence. The numerous close-ups are and magnify the acting of the actors, who deliver a fine performance and touch the viewer. An exercise in style unquestionably mastered.

Staging social misery and its consequences, to better understand or exorcise or to exorcise certain evils, is the challenge Arnaud Desplechin seems to have set himself. Arnaud Desplechin. In 2008, the documentary Roubaix, central police station a look back at a sordid murder case in 2002. Two young women, Marie (played by the unrecognizable Sara Forestier) and Claude (played by Léa Seydoux) had broken into their elderly neighbor's house to rob and kill her. and kill her. Ten years later, the director realizes that these images haunt him and decided to rework them. He opted for a realistic naturalistic aesthetic, as advocated in early film noir. film noir.

A disturbing realism

While the intention is good, the result doesn't avoid the pitfalls that Balzac and Zola fell into before him. As is the case when reading the serial novels of the 19th century^th, But you can't help but find the time dragging on. Following Inspector Daoud (the magnificent and charismatic Roschdy Zem) in his investigations takes up too much of the film's time. Admittedly, this is what should enable total immersion in the life of the police station, to set the scene, learn a little more about the characters and set the mood, but unfortunately the pace is too slow and the viewer loses interest. The main plot arrives too late, drowned out by facts that could be of secondary importance.

The dialogue, too, is barely reworked, borrowing accents and tics of language specific to the region, origin or milieu in which the protagonists live, and can be disturbing. Here again, the desire to remain faithful to reality is defensible, but we can't help feeling that we're faced with a caricature or typification of the characters. Do people really talk like that? Do people really live like this? While we readily accept the stereotype of the taciturn, ultra-intelligent superintendent or the slightly tortured young cop out to prove himself, because that's part of the thriller, we find it harder to accept that the supporting characters are so real that they threaten to turn into clichés at any moment.

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As I leave the room, one conclusion comes to mind: Roubaix, a light is one of those films that both moves and annoys, touches and embarrasses. It seems to me that this is the case because, as its title says, it's a practically antithetical formula, Roubaix, a light mixes poetry and beauty with that which most frightens us and which we seek to repel, the banal and the everyday. In this way, we receive them right in the face, in spite of ourselves, and for this very reason, this film seems to me to be a great success.

Write to the author: kelly.lambiel@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Xenix Films