[CRITICAL] TOUR DE FRANCE

They are rare in the comedian‘s that you can shoot the camera to the shoulder, in video format , and in direct light, while being almost certain to reach a state of-a-bitch, and that, whatever the quality of the image, plan, or scenario… there is Fabrice Lucchini , Benedict Poolevorde ; Vincent Cassel in a different kind… and of course Gérard Depardieu !

It, the filmmakers have understood this since the great Mammuth by Gustave Kervern and Benoit Delepine, no one has stopped making this sacred monster of French Cinema, a figure of a naturalist in power. This is not a bad thing, quite the contrary : Gérard Depardieu has this talent of knowing be facing the camera with no need for anything other than to be there. the actor and thus offers the pleasure to go to a cinema smaller, more singular, and it is a success without a doubt. For example, this was already the case in Frog winter of Slony Sow in 2011, this was again the case in the experimental The End, where Depardieu was even the unique role of the film. Then, of course, find in the casting of the TOUR DE FRANCE , the third feature film by Rachid Djaïdani, is not a surprise, and of course, you want to go there… On this point, no disappointment : Gérard Depardieu does the job, he carries the film of his broad shoulders and we’ll have nothing to say about this actor definitely huge… which is not quite the case in the film itself.

Already in the form, the TOUR DE FRANCE is often hit and miss with its aesthetic video and its insertions of sequences at the smartphone, which have nonetheless proven successful in other films (including the Divine), but here are a flop. And then there’s this side ” here, we are going to shoot it, it is beautiful “, which generates plans free without no sense, seeming to be there just for the instant pleasure of filming something without that it does not bring anything to the narrative, visual or even symbolic.

Beyond that, nowe have to deal with TOUR DE FRANCE, a copy of barely camouflaged the (awesome) Holy Love, where there is talk of making Gérard Depardieu a widower weeping and putting it in a van for him to travel around the beautiful regions of France, not on the wine route this time, but the route of the ports – in order to paint them… Well… Let’s move ; it will give the film the benefit of the doubt, although this is still a little big.

Let us therefore more about the background and history of TOUR DE FRANCE;

Gérard Depardieu, under the name of Serge, is makes it so as every summer on the roads of France to remake the path of the painter Joseph Vernet (who painted the ports 250 years ago), in order to keep a promise made to his wife. Like a pilgrimage to Mecca, he passes through the most picturesque areas of France, and painted in the nostalgia of his love. But this year he was accompanied by Far-Hook, a rapper (played by the real rapper Sadek) on the head which glides a “contract” – understand that it is in danger of death.

We see it getting as big as a house and the road movie, of tolerance, of the discovery of the other, and the abolition of differences… But why not… On the other hand where the shoe pinches, is that there is a malaise in the background of the film, certainly not wanted, but that is obvious to anyone who is wondering about the message potential of a realization.

“In the Tour de France, it is a question of the opposition manichean as possible to the France of before and of the France of today, the art of yesterday and that of the 2000s and an old French painter racist and the rapper young…”

In TOUR DE FRANCE it is a question of the opposition manichean as possible to the France of before and of the France of today, the art of yesterday and that of the 2000s and an old French painter racist and the rapper young rebeu cool suburban rapper “islamic,” we say to Serge).

If one pass in addition to the scenario completed facilities, and the scenes shots that are desperate as they are pulled by the hair (twists with the punch and good feelings of a naive distressing)… TOUR DE FRANCE could be the story banal but touching tale of an old man who begins to love the youth, a delinquent who begins to find qualities in rap, or even a racist who gets three scenes to not be… The topic of the difference would perhaps not been dealt with in a bilateral way (Farouk is immediately drawn up without any default), but TOUR DE FRANCE would have been cute, to be stored in the category movie niche not unpleasant…

Unfortunately, the film very, too awkward, plunges in spite of himself in the paths nebulous a subject more political that cleaves the society today. In other cases, such a placement can propel a film to a dimension of controversy exciting, but that’s not the case here. The movie offers no opening to the reflection, nor does it expose several avenues of interpretation, it takes the viewer hostage to its premise and its subject. TOUR DE FRANCE is clearly a statement about the potential islamisation of the natural in France (hear the development of the muslim culture that would become the first of France), a movement that (in the film) appears as self-evident and to be heard. Those who object to it (as opposed to progress in general) would be the old idiot, the ignorant and the insensitive. So we learn that Serge became a minority in its village, and that even the SDF, the most gallic of the hometown addresses him by throwing inshallah ; what at first shock Serge, but he seems to normal at the end of the film : this is the new France… We feel the ode to the tolerance, but the message is not clear enough to be bright and humanist as it seems to have been intended. The positioning of the film takes towards racism reversed and leaves a bitter taste, because it is still not quite as to link the bottom with the packaging. That we are told really the France of today, and what attitude we request there to adopt?

TOUR DE FRANCE seems to us to be so far away from his ambitions… Yet it had a beautiful subject, an aesthetic trench, a portrait of the culture of hip-hop is still too little exploited in the French film (except for the very nice surprise ofOrelsan and his delightful How it is far away), and a great actor… But the feeling of background, very quickly, takes up all the space.

Sarah

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