Many films were able to represent the war and its consequences on the psychology of the man ; Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Contempt or, more recently, American Sniper. SEE THE COUNTRY has the particularity, on the one hand to adopt a female point of view (by its directors/authors and the characters), and show nothing of the war itself, on the other hand.
The film follows a section of the military return from Afghanistan. Before returning home, the soldiers must spend three days in a five star hotel in Cyprus to decompress and discuss, during group sessions, events they have experienced. The ” sas “, as it’s called in the army, wants to be paradise, but referred only to the confinement and oppression. Feeling felt from the first moment by the viewer in front of the omnipresence of blue – from heaven to the sea. The film reveals so much to the destructive nature of war on the man that the internal difficulties in the army, mainly when one is a woman.
Women are not many in the army. They are also often invisible in the eyes of their superiors, who, by habit, is generally provided to the company by ” gentlemen “. The work is, therefore, a double for them. When they succeed, is that they fight like men. When it shit, it is precisely because they are ” chicks who wear bad luck “. And the rest, it is necessary to do with the allusions of men, and assaults. Live with the same, since the silence is imposed by the strongest. But if it shows particularly the violence suffered by women, SEE THE COUNTRY mainly present violence of daily life, in time of rest, and that eventually affects everyone. The filmmakers – the two sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin – give more of what happened on the field to the imagination. Sessions of therapy of group, being illustrated by reproductions by computer, such as video games, events experienced by the section. Moments that are often a way to bear witness to this violence that spares no one. Men or women, each spring, a victim of the past months on the front. Has the image of the dog (Jérémie Laheurte, seen most recently in July-August), depressed over the loss of a pet, and that fails to externalize his evil be in the physical fight with his companions. For others, the violence seems natural, even desired and hoped for. SEE THE COUNTRY has the intelligence to present different personalities, and not to stay always focused on the duo main.
“See the Country takes us by the throat and keeps us in a form of oppression, utterly fascinating.”
This duo, so it is Dawn, and Navy. These famous ” women of the army “. Delphine and Muriel Coulin make them captivating and bring out all their beauty. Beauty natural physical but especially beauty of the soul, by their force, which reads in their looks. The two directors have made the good lot with Ariane Labed (she had already enthralled in Fidelio, the odyssé Alice) and Soko. The two actresses are in perfect cohesion. Dawn, always right – this is where all the master’s d’Ariane Labed in the management of his / her body, accepts the sas and what it includes. In an obvious need to confide and to be back on an attack suffered by their section during which she was wounded. For its part, Navy is in the refusal, and the opposition, but do we cache nothing of her extreme distress. Soko reveals beautifully all the trouble to be of this character and gets naked in front of the camera. SEE THE COUNTRY develop and finesse their two points of view. And following Dawn and Navy, the film manages to take us by the throat, and to keep us in a form of oppression, absolutely fascinating. This until the last plan d’Ariane Labed, in tears, but silent, as a symbol of these three days as tiring (if not more) as the months of war, which ultimately don’t help in nothing to these soldiers. But remains alive and well in confinement, physical and psychological terrible.
Stone Siclier
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