Film Review
Director Philippe Lioret appears to have taken one or two leaves out of
Ken Loach's book for his latest film, a grimly realist drama that is
obviously intended to prick our collective conscience and provoke
debate about what is fast becoming one of the most important social and
moral issues of our time. Whilst
Welcome may lack Loach's political
maturity and dark sense of irony, it is has something of the impact of
his better films. It is a film that compels us to set aside our
prejudices and for once sympathise with the plight of 'the Other', in
this case illegal immigrants who are prepared to risk everything to get
to the country of their dreams and start a new life.
Welcome revisits territory which
Lioret previously explored in his 1993 debut film,
Tombés
du ciel (remade in 2004 by Steven Spielberg as
The Terminal), and is a similarly
stark portrayal of the limbo-like existence which immigrants find
themselves in when they become stranded at the border, so near to
realising their ambitions, and yet so far.
The subject of illegal immigration is a controversial one, one that
arouses strong feelings and takes up considerable column space in the
newspapers. (Journalists tend to overlook the fact that much of
our prosperity is down to the contribution made by hardworking
immigrants of the past and present.)
Welcome is much less concerned with the politics and economics
of immigration than with the humanitarian side of the
equation. It shows us how things are from the point of view of
the illegal immigrants (a loaded term if ever there was one, as vile as
the French term
clandestins)
- it shows what they are prepared to risk, what they suffer at the
hands of an overzealous police, unscrupulous people traffickers and an
intolerant native population. It is a film that is both cruelly
true-to-life and intensely thought-provoking, a film that cannot fail
to leave its spectator unmoved, whatever your views on illegal
immigrants. In his best film to date, Philippe Lioret gives us a
sense of what it is like to be an outsider who is willing to risk
everything, absolutely everything, so that he may start a new life in
what he considers to be a far better society than the one he was born
into.
Welcome was nominated for ten
Césars in 2010, and the fact that it did not win a single award
may be more a reflection of its controversial content than its
merit. The film confronts us with some extremely unpalatable
truths about the kind of society we may be in danger of becoming.
We are rightly disgusted by what the Nazis did during the Second World
War, but the way in which illegal immigrants are treated as they try to
enter our countries has an unmistakable ring of totalitarian fanaticism
about it, as the film shows. There are disturbing echoes of
France under the Occupation: anyone who attempts to help the immigrants
in any way risks prosecution, immigrants are refused entrance to shops
and other public places, neighbours are all too willing to denounce
immigrant-sympathisers to the police, and the detention centre into
which the immigrants are unceremoniously dumped is clearly just a
concentration camp by another name. The parallels with life under
the Nazis are all too easily seen and you are left wondering just what
kind of society we are becoming if, to protect our own way of life, we
must treat other human beings as if they were plague-infected vermin.
The obscene brutality of the world as it is experienced by the immigrants
is put into sharp relief when set against the warm, selfless friendship
that develops between an ordinary Frenchman, Simon, and an Iraqi
refugee, Bilal, played respectively by Vincent Lindon and Firat
Ayverdi. Both actors bring a touching authenticity and depth to
their performances which gives the film its arresting
humanity. Lindon, an established star of French cinema, is
cast in the kind of role he is best suited for, the sympathetic working
class everyman who appears to be in a perpetual mid-life crisis.
Ayverdi, by contrast, is a total newcomer, and in his first acting job
he succeeds in virtually stealing the film, so convincingly does he
convey the feelings and aspirations of an immigrant who is desperate to
start a new life in the West. It is interesting that Bilal's
attempt to get to what he believes is Utopia (Manchester as it turns
out) is mirrored by Simon's own spiritual development in the course of
the film. Both characters are on a journey to a better place, but
neither has much chance of getting there.
One of the roles of cinema which has been somewhat neglected in recent
years is that of presenting important social issues to a mainstream
audience in a way that stimulates interest and debate.
Welcome is just such a film, and it
is encouraging that it attracted large audiences in France and many
other countries in the West on its original release. To its
credit, it does not labour its political points but focuses more on its
tale of friendship and personal aspiration, and this is what makes it
such a powerfully engaging piece of drama. Whilst the film is a
tad simplistic in places (and is somewhat weakened by a few unnecessary
plot contrivances), it succeeds in getting us to look at the issue of
immigration from a fresh perspective, to ask ourselves whether the
approach presently being pursued by our political leaders is
necessarily the right one. After all, it is only a matter of
chance that we are not the ones trying to get in, and perhaps the truth
is that we need immigrants far more than we currently realise.
There may come a time when people like Bilal - resourceful, driven and
committed individuals - are welcomed with open arms.
© James Travers 2011
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Film Synopsis
Bilal, a 17-year-old Kurdish man, arrives illegally at Calais, hoping to swim
across the Channel to England. If he succeeds, he intends to
look for the girlfriend he hasn't seen for a long time and train to
become a footballer. But first he has to learn how to swim,
so he begins to frequent a municipal swimming pool. Here, he gets
to know Simon, a pool attendant, who is at a loose end after his recent
divorce. Impressed by Bilal's naive optimism, Simon
agrees to coach him, but warns him that swimming across the
English Channel is a virtual impossibility. Bilal is in no mind to accept his
friend's advice. He must get to England, whatever the cost...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.