Les Marchands de sable (2000)
Directed by Pierre Salvadori

Film Review

Les Marchands de sable represents a dramatic change of tack for director Pierre Salvadori, away from the socially-conscious comedies that had brought him success and recognition in the 1990s - Cible émouvante (1993), Les Apprentis (1995) and Comme elle respire (1998).  With his fourth feature, Salvadori moves into Martin Scorsese territory with a gritty urban gangster film that makes a fairly decent fist of combining social realist drama with the kind of stylised noir crime-thriller that had appealed to French cinema audiences since the 1950s.

This species of hard-edged polar social became increasingly popular with French film directors throughout the 2000s, other notable examples including Olivier Marchal's 36 Quai des Orfèvres (2004) and Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (2009).  Compared with these more confidently helmed explorations of the dark underbelly of French society Salvadori's film appears a somewhat quaint and half-hearted affair, but through some strong acting and imaginative mise-en-scène it succeeds in holding the attention, despite a rambling narrative which is muddled by its needlessly elliptical structure.

It's a bleak and depressing portrait of a socially deprived district of Paris that Les Marchands de sable presents us with, where drugs peddling and money laundering are endemic and everyone - even the supposed good guys - are tainted by corruption and base motives.  This is not a view of Paris that those outside of France will have much awareness of, but it is one that is becoming increasingly familiar to the residents of inner cities across France as the country's social problems worsen, helped by racism-fuelling immigration and a burgeoning criminal underclass.

Salvadori and his co-screenwriter Nico Saada offer such a graphic, near-apocalyptic vision of modern Parisian life that you become almost inured to the extreme violence that seems to be the defining characteristic of this urban hellhole.  After the shock brutal disposal of what we are led to mistake for the film's main character half-way through, subsequent displays of violence, no matter how gruesome, have much less of an impact than they should.  Perhaps this is the whole point of the film: that it is all too easy to become used to violence.  You just learn to accept it as part of life - the killing, the drug dealing, the betrayal and revenge, even the fear.

The liberal use of flashbacks and shifting first person perspectives add to the impression of a world lacking in both moral certainties and personal stability, but this also serves to prevent us from engaging at a deep enough level with any of the protagonists.  There are some impressive performances - notably from Mathieu Demy and Salvadori favourite Guillaume Depardieu - but it is hard to connect with any of the similarly motivated characters, just as it would be impossible to differentiate between individuals slugging it out in a mud bath during a torrential downpour.

Les Marchands de sable has many good points but it fails to be as satisfying as the director's earlier comedies.  Perhaps discouraged by the lukewarm reception the film received on its release in 2000, Pierre Salvadori reverted to lighter fare for his subsequent films, winning back his audience and the critics with more frivolous fare, Après vous (2003) and Hors de prix (2006).

Film Synopsis

On leaving prison after completing a short stretch for a petty crime, Marie makes her way back to the only person she can count on for support, her brother Antoine.  Little does she know that he is mixed up with drugs dealing across Paris's crime-ridden 18th arrondissement.  Antoine comes to a nasty end when he betrays his supplier, Xavier, shot down when he tries to abscond with money belonging to his crooked employer.

Shocked by her brother's sudden death, Marie sets about trying to find his killer, intent on exacting a bloody revenge.  In this she engages the support of Alain, the owner of a tatty pavement café at which Antoine worked as a waiter.  She is also assisted by Xavier, not knowing that the latter is in fact the man she is hunting.  To cover his tracks, Xavier persuades Marie that the man who killed her brother was Stéphane, a friend of Antoine before they fell out.

Once Marie has sated her blood lust on Stéphane, she is herself murdered by Xavier.  It is left to Alain to avenge the death of Marie, the woman he has lost his heart to - a task he executes with ruthless efficiency.  Xavier's uncle, a local crime boss, then takes advantage of Alain's financial predicament, using his bar to launder dirty money obtained through his drugs trafficking operation.  Sickened by the milieu he has become mixed up in, Antoine has only one course open to him - to hand himself over to the police.