Cinefile is our new monthly cinema rendezvous, where we talk about recent releases in France and elsewhere with directors, actors, editors and our RFI film-buffs. In Cinefile in April are an African satire, a Franco-African family film and a French post-world war I drama with a tribute to African soldiers.
Welcome to Gondwana (Bienvenue au Gondwana), is set in Africa today and directed by comedian Mamane, who has a regular slot on RFI in French. It's full of fun and serious jabs at African and Western rulers. It's cast is pan-African, and it's shot in Côte d'Ivoire where Mamane says, "people are known for their sense of humour," and "the Ivorian state let us film wherever we wanted including in official buildings... and gave us money to help make the film."
Ceasefire (Cessez-le-Feu) revolves around an awkward welcome home for a former front-line soldier in the aftermath of World War I. Director Emmanuel Courcol's main character wanders off to sub-Saharan Africa to forget the carnage.
Welcome to Gomont-Marly (Bienvenue au Gomont-Marly) is set in the 1970s in France, directed by Julien Rambaldi. It tells a story based on the true-life experiences of a young African doctor and his family who land up in a village in the middle of nowhere. For them as much as for the locals, it's as if they all came from different planets.
Listen to the programme and you can answer a question about it in Susan Owensby's The Sound Kitchen next weekend.
Review: Cessez-le-Feu
Emmanuel Courcol's film springs from a family story but he says that these are not his grandfather's experiences, although he did fight in World War I and had been seriously affected by it.
A sense of doom arises from the characters' striving to continue living with their persistent ghosts.
"The stories of the men and women in the film convey the horror of war, that World War I was a terrible massacre," Courcol says. "This, I suppose, makes it an anti-war film.”
Romain Duris plays Georges Laffont, the brother who comes away from the trenches with unseen injuries. He runs off to Africa.
“It seemed natural to me that a French man who could choose any number of ways to forget his traumatic experiences of World War I would have opted to seek adventure in an unfamiliar although colonial territory which Africa represented at that time," Courcol who shot parts of this Franco-Belgian work in Burkina Faso and in Senegal told RFI's Cinefile. "Georges flees from his memory to a place which is completely new to him.”
Georges is accompanied during his adventure in Africa by a former artilleryman, Diofo (Wabinlé Nabié) who is also his translator and guide there.
He’s a brother-in-arms, they are close enough but Georges is the boss in an unequal friendship.
“The Africans who went to fight for France in World War I and survived, to get back home, were often injured or affected mentally," notes Courcol.
Diofo delights and impresses local villagers who gather round as he tells wild tales of war, of France and of Europe. He seems almost possessed with a special exotic power and brandishes a model of the Eiffel Tower as his lucky charm, which he maintains protected him.
“It was a fun idea," says Courcol. "But it's ironic too. It’s a symbol of France, in a way, it’s what he fought for. It’s Diofo’s lucky charm and it is his trade mark, it gives him status among those who haven’t been to Europe. it's supposed to protect him but it in the end, it doesn't.”
Gregory Gadbois plays Marcel, Georges' brother, who also returns from the war, but has lost his power of speech. Gadbois is convincing and touching. Sensitive, delicate, suffering literally in silence, he communicates without uttering a word, just by his facial expressions and presence.
Duris plays a role unlike his previous roles, says Courcol, who had imagined a more corpulent, physical presence, something of a Jean Gabin. “Romain worked hard and turned out to be a good choice for this sombre, solid character.”
Moments of well-lit joy and compassion, fascinating Gadbois, angry Duris, a gutsy woman sign-language teacher (Céline Sallette), a gentle war-widow (Julie-Marie Parmentier) and a devastated mother (Maryvonne Schiltz) brighten a story that is leaded with memories, trauma, and souvenirs, material and psychological.
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning
Subscribe