[CRITICAL] WITH OPEN ARMS

For his latest film, open arms, Philippe de Chauveron uses the recipe of a clash of cultures That is what we did to God ?, but does that to flirt with many of the racist clichés.

In spite of the controversy that has preceded the film, linked to the shots probably ashamed that he is likely to convey, we went to see WITH OPEN ARMS, the new movie from Philippe de Chauveron (That is what we did to God ?). As often, trying to stay unprejudiced, and hoping not to be in the shelter of a good surprise. Without going that far, it must be admitted qualities WITH OPEN ARMS. But these can be found in the end that is hidden by many defects. Sometimes politically incorrect, it plays quite skillfully on the razor’s edge, without crossing the red line of the wickedness.

At OPEN ARMS is making fun of the Roma and their supposed habits. To do this, Ary Abittan did not skimp on the range of the representation of his character : the clothes, the snags, the lack of education, violence and values archaic. It is sometimes funny, especially because of the way naïve enough that the couple Fougerole, pushed to its limits intellectuals, which was accepted by altruism forced as dictated by the little tender Babik and her family. But the problem here is the repetition to the death of the same gags throughout the film, which quickly turns in a circle. The dialogue – of the type ” I do not support injustice “, “my life is commitment “”it is important to be generous “and the famous” I have nothing against the Roma ” – as if the scriptwriters had wanted to ensure steadily and carefully that the public understands the good spirit child.

What is generally interesting in a movie, this is the trajectory of the characters, their development through the plot and the transformation of their consciences. What catches the attention, which it is the subject and the treatment, it is the ability of everyone to question, to doubt his certainties, thanks to a meeting that is supposed to sweep away the prejudices, especially in a confrontation. The opposition diamétrale of the characters and the culture shock caused, especially if it is not chosen but imposed, is a classic. Intouchables from Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache , is a perfect example that everyone can learn from the other without judging, when The Great Sharing of Alexandra Leclère, in the same vein as ARM OPEN a little less.

“The concerns With open arms is that its characters do not do all grow up” Click To Tweet

In HAS OPEN ARMS, a few changes indeed occur. The character of Jean-Etienne Fougerole is freely inspired by these writers and philosophers of the left and committed to the great causes. It is presented as one of those great bourgeois donors of lessons and with which it is sometimes difficult to consider the sincerity to the “no-teeth“. While mocking finely of this social category, the film poses very well the fundamental issues that crosses the character : how to put in the agreement and in practice the idea of humanistic generosity and sharing with the money and the luxury in which it operates ? An intellectual of the left, has he the right to be rich and at the same time to defend the poor and excluded populations ? How to match its rhetoric and its actions ? But more than to truly transform the character, WITH OPEN ARMS , manages to reconnect to the “Jean-Etienne managed” to “Jean-Etienne engaged on the ground and fiery” as he was. Somehow, this encounter with Babik takes him back to his original battle and his open arms allow him to reopen his eyes.

It is a little more complicated to believe in the return to the sources and to the bohemian spirit pasionaria of his wife, heiress Daphne (Elsa Zylberstein), became an artist. Because the central character of the film, it is still the character of Christian clavier, as in That is what we did to God ? His wife serves as a foil and mirror to his questions as did also Chantal Lauby. The string is the same, and the output of their shackles combined with the blowing of the pellets of the two women in the face of the difficulty of the situation is in fact quite similar. When one takes refuge in the depression and zumba, the other awakens a sexuality repressed by the time, the uses, the gentrification of its torque to be more interested in the appearances of sincerity.

The problem is that Daphne chooses evil, his possible lover, Berruto, who pretends to be a fake Rom ! Alas, alas, that was surely a skill of the plot (that we had also seen in The Large Share with a faux SDF), allowing the writers to clear a possible bad conscience, falls into the water. The bad faith and opportunism of the character do nothing, if not a certain unease as the actor who embodies (Cyril Lecomte) sounds wrong. Without a doubt, in the minds of the writers, the appearance of this character trickster to the accent marseillais had it for the objective of providing an item comparison to Babik, showing that there are always “worse” than a Rom ? It is frankly missed, because no sequence in which Berruto appears not to laugh.

But where the bottom hurts, really, is that OPEN ARMS does not propose any change to Babik. Suggesting the idea that he has only the ambition to serve and gorging, while washing her honor to the father, and that he has no desire to integrate. The film implies that her intelligence is so limited that it will not enable him ever to evolve neither intellectually nor culturally, nor socially.Presented as a dirty macho guy without a soul, and greedy for money, he does in fact never empathy. Nobody takes the trouble to help her understand that there may be another solution that verbal and physical violence, which he demonstrates especially to her handicapped brother. Person cannot help to question his ideas ancestral on virginity before the marriage of his daughter, or his death threats against his family. Person does not help to grow out of it, and different from this story. It thus leaves in his hole, the more rich, but ignorant… WITH OPEN ARMS, and, in particular, its end, and also agreed that inconvenient, vehicle is then precisely the negative stereotypes and racist as one could fear.

Sylvie-Noelle

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