Film Review
In this complex, multi-faceted drama, director Robert Guédiguian returns once again
to one of the main themes of his oeuvre, the progressive erosion of working class ideals
by social and political factors.
Whilst this theme is tangential to most of his
films (
Dernier été (1981),
Marius et Jeannette (1997),
À la vie, à la mort! (1995)),
here it provides the central thrust of the narrative. Guédiguian portrays
the working class ethic as inherently noble yet, at the same time, suggests that such
an ethic is an illusion. This apparent contradiction, which can be seen in all of
the director's films if one cares to look, provides the real essence for
Dieu
vomit les tièdes, a pivotal film in the Robert Guédiguian canon.
What distinguishes this director's unique brand of cinema is the way in which
working class virtues are amplified and characters from this milieu ennobled to an almost
surrealist level, in stark contrast to their grim realist surroundings. In
Dieu vomit les tièdes, Guédiguian
uses these familiar trademarks to question whether this view of the working classes is
really justified. How can such nobility be ascribed to a stratum of society which
is in terminal decline, its moral disintegration fuelled by growing unemployment and street
crime? This is indeed a thought-provoking film, but it is also one that is
exquisitely poetic.
As ever, Robert Guédiguian is well-served by his familiar
troupe of actors. Gérard Meylan and Ariane Ascaride, who have featured in
all of Guédiguian's films to date, perfectly portray the director's
notion of a “noble working class”. Meylan's character, with the
physique of a dockworker, is ennobled and liberated by his cultural awareness, his love
of the beauty of nature and desire to teach young children. By contrast, Ascaride's
character, less culturally aware, is far more restrained by her working class origins.
Whilst Meylan's character is free and alone, Ascaride's remains a part of
the society from which she comes. Who is the better emblem of the working class
ideal - the one who rejects society when it ceases to live up to his expectations,
or the one who stays with that society, unaware of its moral decline? The intense
introspective performance from these two excellent actors ensures that the answer to this
question is not easily divined.
Further contrasts are offered in the form of two
additional characters, played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Pierre Banderet. The
one feels compelled to return to his origins on a misguided belief that this will resolve
his midlife crisis. The other, quite frankly, doesn't give a damn. He
has sold out completely in order to make his newspaper a success, although he still has
the odd twinge of guilt. Will either of these two end up sacrificing everything
for the working class ideal? It's a bit unlikely.
The irony is that
none of the four characters has any hope of living up their childhood oath. Like
the noble aspirations of the French Revolution (the bicentenary of which provides an appropriate,
albeit cheeky, backdrop for the story), this oath can never be adhered to. Human
society depends upon change for continued existence or to satisfy an innate desire for
progress. Where Communism and Fascism have failed, capitalism appears to work, mainly
because it allows change to happen rather than trying to repress it. You either
accept the fact, and live with an aching conscience, or you deny it, and end up failing
to destroy the world you hate. Ideology, by its very nature - a snapshot nirvana
- can never be realised in a world where there is change. And change is inevitable.
Guédiguian explores these themes with his customary poetry, the darkness
of which is emphasised by the unfaltering sunniness of his location photography.
There is less of the comic slant that one finds in some of the director's better
known works, but his keen appreciation of human nature, and of the innumerable paradoxes
that lie therein, are as apparent as ever. Although modest in its aspect,
Dieu vomit les tièdes is a powerful and
provocative work, one that wryly laments the passing of an ideal that probably never was
and warns us that all ideology, however honourable and persuasive, is bound to fail in
the end.
© James Travers 2004
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Next Robert Guédiguian film:
À la vie, à la mort! (1995)