Damien veut changer le monde (2019)
Directed by Xavier de Choudens

Film Review

Damien veut changer le monde is the fourth feature from director Xavier de Choudens and follows Joseph et la fille (2010), a curious melange of melodrama and film noir thriller that struggled to make much of an impact.  The director's most satisfying film to date, his vibrant 2019 offering is a well-intended social comedy that takes a refreshingly light-hearted and optimistic look at one of the burning issues in France today - society's attitude towards the ever-growing problem of illegal immigration.

It is a subject that is rarely out of the headlines in France, with libertarians and xenophobes becoming ever more entrenched in an increasingly dirty war of over-inflated opinion that shows no sign of ending any time soon.  French filmmakers, a key driver of the country's social conscience, have also been infected by this craze, and there have many worthy films as a consequence.  Virtually all of these cinematic thought-provokers have adopted a suitably sombre tone, driving home the inhumane and completely unjust nature of France's treatment of illegal immigrants (the so-called sans papiers).  What sets de Choudens's film apart is that it succeeds in looking at this dispiriting subject from a humorous angle, without appearing crass or flippant.

The rise of the extreme right in France (and most other countries in Europe, notably the UK and Italy) is a bitterly depressing reflection of how the immigration crisis (which is at least partly due to misguided western intervention in the Middle East since 2000) is being cynically exploited by the most odious stratum of the political class for personal gain.  De Choudens's heart-warming film is a timely reaction against this, arguing that integration - not mass expulsion - is the answer, and this can only work if ordinary people are willing to band together to make it work.  As in so many spheres of human activity, love not hate is the way to resolve an ever-worsening situation. Since when has hatred and bigotry solved anything?
 
Cast in the leading role of a latterday Robin Hood is the hyper-charismatic rising star Franck Gastambide.  Not content with being one of French mainstream cinema's leading lights, Gastambide has also embarked on a promising career as a screenwriter and director recently - witnessed by the success of his 2018 film Taxt 5, one of the box office hits of the year. Gastambide's Damien is a shaven-headed goon of the Pierre Richard variety, an unlikely role model for the kind of individual our society now desperately needs to fend off the venom-spitting preachers of hate who threaten us all.

Borne aloft by a gravity-defying cocktail of naivety and good intentions, the lovably daft Damien comes up with a way of thwarting the deportation of immigrants that is so simple and brilliant that it risks being emulated in real life by anyone watching the film.  In fact, Damien's solution is bonkers but this doesn't detract from the film's underlying message which is that immigrants (illegal or otherwise) are human beings, and deserve to be treated as such.  The Holocaust should remind us what inevitably follows if we forget this simple fact.

Just as concerns over climate change are beginning to galvanising a mass public response to the threat of impending global catastrophe, so similar acts of solidarity across a wide swathe of society are necessary to deal other issues that our unimaginably useless, inward-looking politicians have singularly failed to come to grips with.  Damien veut changer le monde may be an unashamed populist little crowdpleaser, marred by its frothy over-earnestness and a painfully tacky ending, but it has a big message that cannot be repeated often enough: only by banding together with good will can humanity address the challenges that face it in the 21st century. Failure to grasp this basic truth can only bring ruin for us all. It's time for us to man up and act like Damien.

Film Synopsis

Damien is an ordinary thirty-something who leads a peaceful life, working in a primary school as a general dogsbody.  His sister Mélanie has made more of her life and now earns a decent crust as a successful lawyer.  Both of them are still marked by the premature death of their mother, an ardent militant committed to various political causes, who left them when they were barely into their teens.  One day, a distressed young boy named Bahzad appeals to Damien to help him - he and his mother are illegal immigrants who face being expelled from the country.

The only solution that occurs to Damien is to make a statement to the authorities that he is Bahzad's father.  When this act of charity becomes widely known in the neighbourhood, Damien is immediately inundated with requests from other mothers in a similar position to help them by claiming paternity of their offspring.  With the help of his enterprising sister and a few trusted friends, Damien creates an organisation by which ordinary men like him can volunteer to pass themselves off as the fathers of children of illegal immigrants to prevent their deportation.  It is a stroke of genius which soon gets completely out of hand...