Ici je vais pas mourir

Here is the “lower-risk consumption room”, the drug injection room that opened in October 2016 in a building at Lariboisière Hospital in Paris. A place that the film never quits, except for a few seconds out on a stretch of pavement, as the credits open. One or two shots are enough to establish the exterior and remind us of the hostility of some nearby residents – the glimpse of a board tied to a window: “No to the drug injection room”. In fact, Ici je vais pas mourir should be shown first of all to these residents, so that the film’s softly portrayed fraternity can cure them of their fears and, above all, to have them hear the drug user who explains, simply, his eyes brimming with fatigue: “It’s ourselves we hurt, we’re not going to hurt anyone”. The place is white except for some functional items of furniture. Its rather blinding neutrality is like a white cube for the film, a place that fades away to make another one visible, with no contours and built solely from the words to which Cécile Dumas and Edie Laconi give free reign: a place where getting high is a home, a country, for those living in the streets and who find there rest, care and respect. This tiny home port offered by the drug injection room becomes a precious room for the audience, as it enables them to lend an ear and understand that this faroff country, where Bilal, Janusz or Hervé have lost themselves, does not in truth have much that is foreign.

Jérôme Momcilovic