SI J’EXISTE, JE NE SUIS PAS UN AUTRE

Hocine, David, Seta, Sofian, all aged about twenty, are taking lessons in an unusual class in the Paris suburb of Bondy in order to reintegrate a standard sixth form class. Bodybuilding, arithmetic or set-making for a play they will put on – the flexible teaching methods enable the filmmakers, all ears, to record the young students’ language as they reply or talk among themselves about their activities. At times, the spontaneity of these “social cases”, as they call themselves, veers towards a form of psittacism. On stage, who speaks, who is spoken? Where does self-expression end, where does recitation begin? The school play offers the film a framework: certainly not the dramaturgy of a feel-good movie (a problem class is managing to do art, what an exploit!), but a formal homology. Through its masterly use of static shots and out-of-frame, the film in fact builds its own stage on which the periphery can become the centre. Where entries and exits from the frame vibrate with the galvanising energy of reclaiming one’s identity. The student indoors, watching his classmates outdoors during recreation, thus decides aloud “Right, I’m going to cruise”, then goes out onto the stage of the recreation yard, a roguish actor acting in his own scenario. The title – an excerpt from The Lay of Maldoror – points to a hard-fought autonomy, including the viewer’s autonomy who is for once spared the equation suburbs = otherness.

Charlotte Garson