Le Ciel attendra (2016)
Directed by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar

Film Review

It's a frightening statistic. According to a recent report by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, around three thousand people residing in France have been radicalised in the last decade, and about a third of these have already left to fight for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.  If the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls is to be believed, the actual numbers may be far higher than this (as many as 15 thousand radicalised in France).  With over thirty terrorist incidents taking place on French soil since 2002 (including the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in January 2015 and the Paris massacre on 13th November 2015 in which 130 people were killed) it's not hard to see why radicalisation is the burning issue in France today.  Filmed in the immediate aftermath of the November attacks, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar's film Le Ciel attendra is both timely and welcome, although, let down by a weak script, it is unlikely to have anything like the impact it should given the seriousness and urgency of its subject.

Mention-Schaar's film has two principal aims.  Firstly, it attempts to understand the causes and process of radicalisation - a necessary prerequisite if we are to stand any chance of being able to combat it.  Secondly, it sets out to make those who are most at risk - namely teenagers, irrespective of their social milieu - aware of the issue so that they are less susceptible to the propaganda and brainwashing techniques employed by extremists, particularly on the internet.  Although the film fulfils this brief admirably it falls somewhat short of incorporating these into a piece of cinema that is likely to appeal to the masses.  Le Ciel attendra is an unwieldy mix of public information film and second rate melodrama that struggles to engage its audience and consequently is far less effective at getting across its key messages than it might have done.

This is somewhat of a letdown after Mention-Schaar's previous film, Les Héritiers (2014), which depicted a class of children from the suburbs reflecting on the horrors of the Holocaust.  Far from engaging our emotions as that film did, Le Ciel attendra does just about everything it can to repel its audience with its over-laboured didacticism and forced emotionality (some scenes are carried to ludicrous extremes).  The fact that the film was co-authored by Dounia Bouzar gives it a certain legimacy - she is after all the woman who founded the CPDSI, an organisation committed to combating sectarian excesses linked to Islam in France.  But Bouzar does the film absolutely no favours when she appears on screen and starts trotting out her by now familiar anti-radicalisation spiel.

Making up for Mention-Schaar's lamentable script and even poorer mise-en-scène are strong lead performances from Noémie Merlant and Naomi Amarger, who, despite some appalling dialogue, succeed in making their characters frighteningly credible.  The interweaving story strands that compare the fate of their two characters - one redeemed, the other tragically lost - owe their dramatic impact and poignancy to the conviction that the two committed actresses bring to their portrayals of two seemingly ordinary schoolgirls who are all too easily transformed into terrorist fanatics.

The more experienced actors playing the girls' parents - Sandrine Bonnaire, Zinedine Soualem, Clotilde Courau and Yvan Attal - are less convincing and, thanks again to some poor writing, merely exacerbate the film's sorry melodramatic excesses.  Were it not for the fact that Le Ciel attendra deals sincerely and intelligently with one of the great issues of our time it would be easy to write it off as a maladroit misfire.  Overlong, ponderous and too deliberately pedagogic for its own good, the film scarcely deserves a cinema release but it is to be welcomed for its contribution to an on-going cross-media campaign to raise awareness of its subject.  It definitely merits being shown in schools (and not just in France), as part of a grown-up discussion of the threats posed by radicalisation and how these may be countered.

Film Synopsis

Sonia is an ordinary 17-year-old girl who is easily led into becoming a Jihadist.  Fortunately, her involvement in a planned terrorist attack is thwarted by the authorities just in time.  Subjected to a programme of de-radicalisation and supported by her family she learns to see the error of her ways.  Mélanie, who is one year younger, isn't so fortunate.  A budding cellist, she has the appearance of being a well-adjusted, well brought-up teenage girl.  But a chance encounter on the internet changes all that.  Influenced by crude brainwashing techniques, she is soon converted to the cause of religious extremism.  Her only desire is to leave France and join the holy war against the infidel.  Her parents can hardly believe what has happened to her...