Du bleu jusqu'en Amérique (1999)
Directed by Sarah Lévy

Film Review

In Du bleu jusqu'en Amérique, her first and (so far) only film for the cinema, director Sarah Lévy makes a bold attempt to take us into the world of the mentally impaired and physically handicapped but fails to engage sufficiently with her subject to make this incredibly risky exercise worthwhile.  To be fair, Lévy deserves some credit for her efforts to get across the mood of hopelessness that permeates every inch of an under-resourced state hospital, and also the desperation felt by someone who feels he may be crippled for life, but she lets herself down badly by failing to make any of her characters convincing and sympathetic.  We see them just as any outsider would, unsightly misfits behaving in ways that we would expect them to, not as human beings trying to forge meaningful lives for themselves out of their misfortune.

It may not have been intentional, but Lévy's comedic slant carries a slightly off-putting note of derision which badly works against the human drama on display.  As a consequence, we feel ourselves constantly distanced from the characters, unable to emphasise with them or even to regard them as anything other than crude misshapen semblances of the human form.  Du bleu jusqu'en Amérique has some impressive acting talent at its disposal (including Marion Cotillard, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 2008 for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Môme) but this is largely wasted on a film that is so lacking in genuine human feeling and depth.  All that the film demonstrates is that disability is hardly a suitable subject for comedy.  Jean-Pierre Sinapi's Nationale 7 (2000) covers similar ground but far more successfully, because it succeeds where Lévy's film fails, in humanising all of the disabled characters it portrays.

Film Synopsis

After sustaining severe injuries in a road accident, an adolescent named Camille begins a course of physiotherapy in a strictly run rehabilitation centre run by Professor Helpos.  Although he is presently confined to a wheelchair, the unfortunate youngster is determined to walk again, if only to hasten his departure from this grim, ghetto-like institution.  He soon falls in with a group of wild misfits who refer to themselves as 'the wreckers'.  These rebellious individuals insist on living by their own rules, ignoring those that are foisted upon them by Helpos and his unfriendly staff.  With his new friends, Camille soon regains his zest for living, first through his friendship with Hamid and his gang of drop-outs, and then through an unexpected love affair with an attractive girl named Solange... .