Faites comme si je n’étais pas là (2000)

Faites comme si je n’étais pas là is a French film first released in 2000, directed by Olivier Jahan.  The film stars Jérémie Renier, Aurore Clément, Johan Leysen, Sami Bouajila and Alexia Stresi.  It has also been released under the title: Pretend I’m Not Here.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


High school student Eric lives with his mother, Hélène, and stepfather, René, on a housing estate for low-income families.  Friendless and unable to communicate with his parents, Eric withdraws into a life of voyeuristic obsession.  He spies on his neighbours with a pair of binoculars, makes detailed notes of what he sees and then includes his observations in a series of poisonous pen letters.  As his situation at home worsens, he becomes increasingly fascinated by a black couple who live opposite him, or, more precisely, by their passionate love making activities...

With a few notable short films under his belt, director Olivier Jahan chose the subject of adolescent introversion for this, his first full-length film – a kind of "400 coups" for the year 2000.  Faites comme si je n’étais pas là is a dark, contemplative work which offers a harrowingly credible portrait of a reclusive and confused teenager traversing the gulf between childhood and adulthood.  Increasingly isolated and unable to make any physical contact with a world that constantly rejects him, that teenager is propelled towards a perverse voyeuristic existence which further alienates him from those around him.  Jahan’s inexperience as a film-maker shows up in the film’s uneven pacing and lack of cohesion, but such faults are compensated for by the film’s originality and relevance to contemporary society.

The film’s central character, Eric, is played by Jérémie Rénier, a talented young Belgian actor who has already earned critical acclaim for his sensitive portrayals of vulnerable adolescents in a number of high profile French-language films (notably the Dardenne brothers’ 1996 social realist drama La Promesse).   Rénier’s restrained, moody performance lends the film its sombre tone, its tension and its haunting realism.  Whilst his character comes across as troubling and unpredictable – perhaps a psychopath in embryo form – his angelic good looks make him appear more of a victim than a villain, the product of an increasingly fragmented and diseased society.  The film’s ending is coyly optimistic but it is also strangely ambiguous.  One interpretation is that Eric’s first experience of love has at last released him from his solitude, so that he can now go on to live a normal, fulfilled life within the very society from which he previously felt excluded.  It is equally plausible that the same experience merely confirms in his mind the fact that he will always remain an outsider – a miserable loner who will either accept his fate or else react against it, with chillingly destructive consequences.

© James Travers 2003

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