TROIS CENTS HOMMES

This immersion in an overnight shelter in Marseille immediately focuses on the doorstep – the door being the nerve centre of this winter shelter for the homeless. A timetable to respect, fighting and alcohol forbidden, a symbolic euro to pay at the desk, the breakfast voucher… A set of rules that many see as structuring rather than almost prisonlike. There is a striking contrast between the moments spent in prayer by the director of the Centre Saint Jean de Dieu and the somewhat loud-mouthed energy he deploys when having the floors disinfected. Starting more from the management’s perspective – doors, walls and staff –, the film soon shifts to the shared sociability of three hundred men, some astonishingly young, who talk about cinema, vocational training, a liking for proverbs or support for the Society for the Protection of Animals. During this strange conversation, the purely observational documentary imperceptibly gives way to an increasingly affirmed theatricality, notably through the subtle use of music. The sometimes Beckett-like humour (reminiscent of the quote from Waiting for Godot heard in Wiseman’s film Welfare) exorcises something akin to urgency. The circulation of words contradicts the supreme insult thrown out by one of the men banned from entry due to alcoholism: “Here, they’re all living dead!”

Charlotte Garson