Story directed by Emmanuel Carrre: private lives, social outlook, existential dilemmas
As the Italian title says Between two worlds (the original – Ouistreham
– the name of the municipality of Normandy from which the ferries to Portsmouth leave), the whole film built on a double opposition, between the French and the English coasts, between those who get on the ferries when the passengers get off and descend when the new ones arrive, between those who command and those who must obey, between those who have a secure job and those who only have a precarious one … but also between those who live all those situations on their own skin and those who instead go through them only to observe them, to tell them … And in the same way also the film it seems to move between two opposites, a first part more narrative and a second where that narration is questioned and put under examination.
At the origin there is the investigation of a journalist from The world, Florence Aubenas, who published in 2010 The Quai de Ouistreham where she talks about her experience as a cleaner in the Caen region: she presented herself under a false identity to prove firsthand what precarious work was made of jobs without union defenses, where you can be fired at any moment, and in this way to share the life of those who have to deal with unemployment and poverty. A book that immediately conquered Juliette Binoche whose stubbornness in wanting to bring it to the cinema managed to overwhelm the defenses of Aubenas (who feared to see her pages diminished or worse misrepresented), eventually involving Emmanuel Carrre in the project, more likely for that reason. that he had demonstrated as a writer (Lives that are not mine a good example of how one can enter the lives of others) and his rare exploits as a director.
His experience as a screenwriter, on the other hand, is much richer (here paired with Hlne Devynck) and you immediately see her touch, since she introduces us to the protagonist (played by an overly glamorous Binoche) in the office for job applications, among the people whose well soon will share the condition. Although Carrre almost immediately suspends the purely narrative thread to reveal to us that that Marianne we have seen a bit awkward, struggling with a bad curriculum and with the inquisitive questions of those who recruit staff, also a writer who shares with the viewer, through the his off-screen voice, the first reflections and the first attempts at writing.
Of course, in the first part of the film to be the master (narratively speaking) the meeting with Cdric, with Marilou, with Michle and Richard, with Marcienne, with Luise and then with Christle, with Justine, with Nadge, with Kevin, with Faal, men and women (all non-professionals, some even entrusted to those who, with another name, Aubenas had really met) with whom he shares the problems of work and life on a daily basis, all with a more or less hidden humanity that the inquiring eye of Marianne will reveal and tell. And on which she opens glimpses even in private life, without the pretensions of completeness of a sociological investigation but with the empathic gaze of those who she wants to share rather than explain. Like when she records Cdric’s confidences.
Then for its cover it is revealed (how, you will find out in the movie) and then the film asks the most difficult questions to answer: how far was it right to enter the lives of those people? And above all: is it moral to use those lives to write a book, to exploit them in some way, to bend them to a purpose they did not know? The book is finished and published (we see the presentation in front of some of the people who were involved in the narration) but Carrre does not want to stop there: a final confrontation is invented between Marianne and Christle that forces the writer to at least ask herself a few questions. Because even the film cannot find the right words about the answers, leaving the viewer to question themselves.
April 5, 2022 (change April 6, 2022 | 10:33)
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