Merveilles à Montfermeil

This very jokey and mischievous film never really takes on the tone of a satire. It is too honest for that. It doesn’t attack, barely mocks, because above all it wants to invent, to try things (...). Jeanne Balibar, making her first film on her own (in 2013 she co-directed the similarly humorous Par exemple, Electre with Pierre Léon), applies to herself and her actors the principles of collective and individual freedom advocated by her characters. In other words, the utopia set out in her screenplay is made tangible by the experience of filming it, which we perceive as a perpetual celebration in which the actors all give the impression of having the times of their lives with no holds barred, resulting in some astonishingly wild scenes, including an unforgettable outburst from Emmanuelle Béart. The film’s challenge could be to demonstrate that all political organisations are theatrical and crazy, and that between the one we see on screen and the one that governs us, there is no contest in terms of invention, generosity and bracing energy. Far from the harsh, sociological realism of Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables, which was made around the same time in the same town and to which Balibar also contributed, Merveilles à Montfermeil (Wonders in the Suburbs) returns to a certain utopian cinema of the 1970s, when the idea was advocated that every political film should invent a form suited to its aspirations. (Marcos Uzal; Libération)