Film Review
Très bien, merci offers
a sobering and very timely reminder of where our so-called liberal
society may be heading as the State grants ever-increasing powers to
the police, ostensibly to make our lives safer. Only a decade
ago, the world which we see portrayed in this film could easily have
been mistaken for Communist Russia at the height of the Cold War,
not a country in the supposedly liberal West.
Today, what the film shows us is all too easily recognisable as the one
we now live in. Fascism by stealth
is one way of describing how things seem to be progressing.
Those who have just woken up to the fact that we may be sleepwalking
into the kind of state-controlled dystopia depicted by Orwell and Kafka
should get a reality check. We are already there. Anyone
who doubts that fact has merely to cross the infinitesimal line that
now delineates the ordinary citizen from the subject of a lawful
arrest. One ill-judged word to a stroppy copper is all it
takes. Meanwhile, the real villains of society - gangsters,
corporate criminals and terrorists - are free to carry on their career
of mayhem.
This is the brave new world which Emmanuelle Cuau portrays with such
frightening veracity in this, one of the most critically acclaimed
films to be released in France in 2007. This is only Cuau's
second full-length film, following
Circuit Carole (1994). It is
the every-day realism of this film - amplified by some convincing
performances from Gilbert Melki (
Après la vie (2002))
and Sandrine Kiberlain (
Betty Fisher et autres histoires (2001)) -
which makes it so chilling, in spite of its darkly comedic
underbelly.
Très bien,
merci is a film that deserves a far wider audience than it is
likely to get, a genuinely thought-provoking work whose relevance to
contemporary society cannot be overstated.
© James Travers 2008
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Film Synopsis
Alex and Béatrice are an ordinary, law-abiding couple who enjoy
a well-ordered life in the French capital. He is an accountant,
she is a taxi driver. They haven't a care in the world - until
the day it all goes wrong. One night, Alex is on his way home
when he sees a group of policemen carrying out a stop-and-search on
another passer-by. The policemen tell Alex to move on. When
he refuses, they take him into custody. He spends the night in a
cell. The next morning, when he tries to make a complaint, the
police bundle him into a van and take him to a psychiatric
clinic. Béatrice manages to get Alex released,
eventually, but by this stage he has lost his job, and his future looks
very bleak...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.