Angoulême 2024 – day 3: The Story of Souleymane, The Victoria System, Kidnapping Inc.

Daily report of the 17th edition of the Angoulême French-language film festival.

Movie of the day: The Story of Souleymane by Boris Lojkine

He was with Twenty Gods And In fanfare (both presented here in Angoulême), one of the French films which, out of competition, had left a deep and lasting mark on people’s minds at the last Cannes Film Festival. And the excitement of May on the Croisette was confirmed yesterday during the Angoulême presentation of this Story of Souleymanethe third feature film by Boris Lojkine, who won awards here for his two previous films (Valois for best direction for Hope in 2014, Valois for best actress for Nina Meurisse for Camille in 2019).

The director depicts two decisive days in the life of his main character, a Guinean who fled his country, a bicycle delivery man in the streets of the capital. Forty-eight before an interview that will decide whether or not his asylum application will be accepted. Lojkine therefore films one of those people we all pass in the street every day, without giving him a glance. In 93 minutes without a break, the film conveys the permanent tension he must face. The permanent race for everything: the anxiety of a ride refused by a customer because he is a few minutes late, the fear of missing the last evening bus that leads to a shelter under penalty of sleeping on the street, the permanent fear that it will be discovered that he is not doing his shopping with his real identity but that of another who lends him his in exchange for a percentage of his meager income, making him his obligated.

This race against time is reminiscent of the one orchestrated by Eric Gravel in Full time where single mother Laure Calamy tried to juggle as best she could – and rather badly than well – between her job as a chambermaid, her children and her interviews to land a new job in a Paris blocked by strikes. No trace of demonstration or sentimentality in Lojkine’s writing and direction. A thousand miles from a sociopolitical melodrama, The Story of Souleymane tells first and foremost a quest for identity. That of a man who left his life, the woman of his dreams and his sick mother to offer them a better future and finds himself exploited and crushed by a consumer society that takes advantage of him as much as it can before throwing him away and attacking someone else.

A character that Lojkine never takes his eyes off, thus giving him back an existence and by ricochet a humanity while everything pushes him to escape the gaze of others, all assimilated to a potential threat. A great film embodied by an immense non-professional actor (like 99% of the cast with the exception of Nina Meurisse), Abou Sangaré, himself, in real life, in search of a regularization that was refused to him… a few days after receiving the interpretation prize of the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. When reality and fiction come together.

Released on November 27th

Duo of the day: Jeanne Balibar-Damien Bonnard in The Victoria System

Back to Angoulême for Sylvain Desclous who had launched the fine box-office career of his previous film here, Great Expectationscarried by Rebecca Marder and Benjamin Lavernhe. And it is on another duo that this adaptation of Eric Reinhardt’s novel published in 2011 is based: Damien Bonnard and Jeanne Balibar. The two heroes of this love story as unexpected as it is passionate which is formed between the construction manager of a tower in La Défense and the HR director of a large multinational, seductive, manipulative whose taste for unfettered freedom will make this man who until then had no history, an idealist fascinated by his exact opposite, ready to do anything to achieve her ends, spin.

Bonnard and Balibar shine with their subtle way of embodying this clash of opposites and the alchemy that emanates from them, the driving force behind a relationship that leaves us wondering every second when it will end up hitting a wall and seeing this predator go and find new prey. And through this relationship that is as dangerous as it is fatal, Desclous, a keen observer of French society and of a certain class struggle that has never completely died out (from Seller has Great hopes), is a perfect parable of capitalism and liberalism which, pushed to their extreme, sweep away everything in their path, including the purest and seemingly incorruptible minds.

Release undetermined

UFO of the day: Kidnapping Inc. by Bruno Mourral

In the image of The Story of Souleymanehere is another film where reality and fiction became one throughout a more than eventful shoot where, among other joys, a large part of the team was kidnapped then released after a good ten days for a ransom while this first feature film by the Haitian Bruno Mourral tells precisely… the kidnapping by two bunglers of a senator’s son who will quickly surpass them. Needless to say how much this satire of Haitian society, notably inspired by its director’s own assassination of his father by gangs in 2005, hits the mark. And this with a sharp sense of black comedy where the absurd becomes here the best weapon against the unleashing of violence and corruption at all levels on a daily basis.

There is some Scorsese and Tarantino – fully assured and perfectly digested influences – in this permanent fireworks display, espousing the absurd decision taken by the two kidnappers after accidentally killing their hostage: kidnapping… a man who looks exactly like him to try to collect the ransom demanded. Mourral mixes genres here with a dexterity that never fails and signs a film where it is almost impossible to guess at the end of a shot what will happen in the next one. A UFO, which passed through the highly prized Midnight section of the Sundance festival, and we hope it will find a distributor in France.

Release undetermined