Le Havre (2011) - film review

Marcel Marx was once a renowned writer.  These days, he lives in exile in the town of Le Havre, where he scrapes a meagre wage by polishing other people’s shoes.  It is not the most remunerative of professions, but it brings him into contact with others and he is content with his life, which he divides between his work, his wife Arletty and the cosy bar where he takes his daily tipple.  One day, Marcel’s happy routine is disrupted when a small African boy named Idrissa enters his life.  The boy, an illegal immigrant, plans to cross the channel to England, but is more likely to be captured by the authorities and sent back to his own country.  Marcel decides to take care of Idrissa, but for how long can he outsmart the persistent Inspector Monet...?

Now here’s a connundrum: what do you get if you cross a 1970s-style French film noir policier with an immigration-themed social comedy which looks as if it may have been penned by Charlie Chaplin and Jacques Tati?  The answer can only be the latest cinematic exploit from acclaimed Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki.  The influence of French cinema (in particular the work of Jean-Pierre Melville and Robert Bresson) can be felt in many of Kaurismäki’s previous films, but Le Havre is nothing less than an exuberant homage to those glorious French films of the past, from Marcel Carné and Jean Renoir to Melville and Tati.  And yet the film is far more than just a self-indulgent pastiche and loud cheer for past cinematic achievements; it is also a highly effective commentary on one of the great social issues of our time - the failure of communities and governments to face up to the challenges and human consequences of illegal immigration.  The plot is essentially the same as that of Philippe Lioret’s Welcome (2009), but Kaurismäki gives it a whole new spin, eschewing hard-edged realism for unapologetic cinematic whimsy - it is hard to say which is the better film.

Melville and Bresson are the two most obvious influences on Le Havre.  The tone and palette of the film are unmistakably Melvillian and eloquently express the shabby, confined lives of the central protagonists who are trapped, not unhappily, in a life of comparative poverty, seemingly untouched by the technological progress which has taken place in the last forty or so years (by all accounts, Kaurismäki seems to be something of a technophobe himself).   The film’s cold film noir aesthetic is constantly undercut by the irreverent humour that runs through it, and this is where the Tati/Chaplin influence is felt, exposing the cruelties and injustices of modern life with barbed irony and farcical plot developments.  The performances are straight from the Robert Bresson school of acting; like Bresson, Kaurismäki does not allow his actors to display external emotions and compels them to deliver their lines as flatly as possible, a technique that heightens the starkly unreal, poetic quality of his films and perhaps makes it easier for audiences to latch onto the essence of what he, one of the most incisive social commentators of our time, is trying to say.

Anyone who enjoyed Kaurismäki’s previous French film, La Vie de Bohème (1992), will be equally taken with this more inspired, more socially conscious follow-up, particularly as André Wilms once again takes a leading role (playing effectively the same character as before, albeit somewhat older and wiser).  Wilms is partnered with Kati Outinen, a talented regular in Kaurismäki’s oeuvre, and an actor who should be familiar to any French film aficionado, Jean-Pierre Darroussin (who looks and acts as though he has been cut-and-paste from a Jean-Pierre Melville thriller).  French rock legend Roberto Piazza (a.k.a. Little Bob) puts in a nice cameo appearance, as does another luminary of French cinema, Jean-Pierre Léaud. 

Even though the acting is stylised and the references to classic films a little too easily seen (assuming you are a French film buff) the principal and supporting cast still manage to bring warmth and sincerity to their performances.  As Chaplin demonstrated so brilliantly in his films of the 1920s and 30s, a filmmaker does not have to immerse himself fully in the grim realities of life in order to make an effective and eloquent social statement.  Topical, stylish, shamelessly nostalgic and yet brimming with truth and humanity, Le Havre was one of the most acclaimed French films of 2011 and a worthy recipient of the Louis Delluc prize that year.

© James Travers 2012

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