Un mal sous son bras

At night, a group of men gather on the stadium of an elite school they once attended. Some of them are the big winners in this new society. Colonists on their own land, they look away so as not to see the gangrene that is growing there.

The swollen carcass of a cow floats in the sea near the chic neighbourhoods of Beirut. Under the influence of a mysterious spell, men interrupt their training session to meet in the woods. A hail storm shatters the city’s glass façades – you might mistakenly think that it is the explosion of 4th August 2020 as the images and violence of the blast are so similar. What curse, what punishment, what supernatural anger have fallen on Lebanon? The evil is perhaps in truth a godsend. Marie Ward invents the enigmatic thread of a tale to evoke the history of the coast and the way in which French colonialism has distorted Lebanese culture and traditions. A broad-brush evocation of course. Because, while this film, like the installation it was part of, is based on rigorous research into the late 19th-century virile naval parades and the construction of power loci that imposed French dominance by radically changing pre-existing social ties, it also takes the opportunity to turn these power relations on their head, liberate a deeply repressed imaginary, bring to light ordinary desires smothered by the latent violence of normality. Closely following the winding coastal roads; moving up to the highland before a precipitous descent, Un mal sous son bras finds the straight path once again, skilfully and with great finesse: the path that short-circuits shame and takes us back to the most ancient images.

Antoine Thirion