An area to defend: a successful French first for Disney Plus (critic)

This impossible love story against the background of Notre-Dame-des-Landes-Qui-Ne-Dit-Pas-Son-Nom works essentially thanks to the brilliant complicity of the Civil / Khoudri duo.

In the summer of 2023, for its very first original French film, Disney+ was not afraid to venture into unknown territory. An area to defendwhich arrives in clear this Thursday on W9, is not really a family comedy or a great consensual romance. Romain Cogitore achieves an eminently political fiction, which speaks of “The collapse of the old world” And the ambition to tell the ZAD of the interior.

We are not exactly in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, but it’s just like. Opposed to the construction of a dam in the south of France, anti-capitalist activists installed in the forest which must be razed form a peaceful, but determined community. A DGSI police officer is sent on a mission to infiltrate the small group. He will fall in love with Myriam, an activist at the antipodes of his values ​​…

Already perfect in Artagnan and Constance in The three musketeers,, Civil François And Lyna Khoudri Replay the Transis lovers with a burning bond, which transpires on the screen. We want to believe in their impossible love story, which highlights the other pan of the film, more police. An area to defend thus succeeds in its infiltration mission by managing to maintain permanent tension, in a spectacular decorum. Romain Cogitore Has spent time in a real ZAD, to best bring life in these timeless bivouacs, outside the Republic. Even if his vision is sometimes too angelic on the bottom, the exploration of this community, rare on the screen, is edifying.

Here is his trailer:

An area to defend: François Civil and Lyna Khoudri, the couple of the year