Film Review
In 2018, director Jean-Bernard Marlin met with almost universal critical
acclaim for his first feature,
Shéhérazade, a hyper-realistic
boy-meets-girl drama located in one of the roughest and toughest districts
of France - the northern suburbs of Marseille. Prior to this, Marlin
made two short films -
La Peau dure (2007) and
La Fugue (2012)
- but with his debut feature the 38-year old filmmaker made such an impact
that he is now widely tipped to become one of the most important French auteurs
of his generation.
Shéhérazade not only received
the coveted Jean-Vigo feature prize in 2018 (shared with Yann Gonzalez's
Un couteau dans le coeur), it also won three Césars against
stiff competition in 2019 - for Best First Film, Most Promising Actor
and Most Promising Actresss.
With its savagely raw
cinéma vérité realism
and uncompromising brutality, Shéhérazade serves up a slice of
gritty urban life that most of us will find pretty unpalatable to watch.
With astonishing vividness it conveys the seething rage of a generation -
youngsters, scarcely out of childhood, living on the extreme margins of society
- that has been totally neglected and is left to its own devices, to be caught
in a precarious life of drugs peddling, teen prostitution and vicious gang
warfare. It may be set in the same city but the vision that Marlin
presents is worlds away from that offered by Robert Guédiguian in
his Marseille-based realist dramas.
A grim indictment of our times the film may be, but it is also one that
resonates with hope. In this modern retelling of
Romeo and Juliet,
its two central protagonists - a juvenile delinquent and a teen prostitute
- both find a way out of their sordid life of crime and self-harm, redeemed
and re-energised by the power of love. It takes a filmmaker of rare
talent to convincingly combine elements as diverse as teen romance, urban
thriller and social realism, but Marlin and his co-screenwriter Catherine
Paillé manage to pull off this remarkable feat with unimaginable deftness.
There is an underlying sensitivity and warmth to this singular film that
is constantly belied by the sheer knife-edge brutality of the world that
its protagonists inhabit.
Marlin's ambition was to make the film as realistic as possible, and in
this he is ably served by his cast of entirely non-professional actors, including
the lead performers Dylan Robert and Kenza Fortas. It is not hard to
see why the latter both won Césars for their work on this, their first
acting job. Both bring a gut-wrenching sense of reality to their arresting
portrayals of characters whose life experiences are not so far removed from their
own. The world that Zac and Shéhérazade inhabit is one
that is scarcely imaginable in a supposedly civilised society, one where teenagers
are exposed to the worst vices known to man and every day is a gruelling
act of survival against the odds. With the help of his two accomplished
lead actors, Jean-Bernard Marlin opens our eyes to a whole new universe of
human degradation and resilience, but he also stirs our hearts with a simple
tale of love that resonates with truth and poignancy.
© James Travers 2019
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Zachary is a 17-year-old delinquent living in one of the roughest neighbourhoods
of north Marseille. His petty criminal exploits have earned him a spell
in a juvenile detention centre, but on leaving the centre he finds he has
no home to return to. His mother will have nothing more to do with him,
and he refuses to be placed with a foster family, so he decides to go on
the run and fend for himself.
One day, a dispirited Zac has a chance encounter with the attractive Shéhérazade,
a girl of his own age who belongs to a gang of teenage prostitutes.
When his old friends turn their back on him, Zac moves in with Shéhérazade,
sharing her cramped apartment and acting as her minder as she attends to
her paying customers. Before he knows it, Zac is a fully fledged pimp,
and this presents some serious problems for him when he realises that he
has fallen in love for the first time in his turbulent life...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.