M, 103 minutes
4 Stars
Review by © Jane Freebury
It is hardly surprising that filmmaker Alice Winocour felt the need to tell a story connected with the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015, when her younger brother, Jeremie, had witnessed it first-hand. He was at the rock concert at the Bataclan on the night it was stormed and turned into a killing ground, and although he managed to hide in a back room, his family had no idea for hours whether he was alive or dead. This story of a national trauma is dedicated to him.
Against this harrowing backdrop, writer-director Winocour has created the character of Mia, a translator and interviewer played by Virginie Efira, who happens to drop in on one of the hospitality venues also attacked that night. While riding her motorcycle home, she had opted to break her journey during heavy rain and shelter at a restaurant along the way. It was a chance event among many others that brought here into the terrorists’ line of sight.
Visually, the early scenes tell the story of a day like any other. From watering the plants on the balcony to plopping the fluffy tabby in front of its bowl at the apartment she shares with her doctor partner, Vincent (Gregoire Colin), before leaving for work. The camera lingers on a basket of red apples while a glass knocked to the kitchen floor is practically played out in real time. Everyday life is visually unremarkable but beautifully captured, a reminder of its preciousness.
Only the restless, nervous energy of music by Arvo Part on the soundtrack hints at imminent danger
It is the same at the restaurant. Some tourists are playfully taking selfies with their entree of escargots, and there’s an office party underway at a nearby table as the birthday boy (Benoit Magimel) sends a longing look Mia’s way. The details leading up to the moment that ISIS struck are like an inventory of what Mia can remember of the day, as she hunts for the details that she can’t. That’s when the screen goes black.
What happened next? She says that it is effaced from her memory. She would like to move on, but that isn’t working. To friends she confides that before, in her career as an interviewer for Radio France, it was others who were the main attraction, but now, as a survivor of the terrorism, it is she who is the main attraction.
She reluctantly attends a support group for survivors when an aggressive woman accuses her of locking herself in the bathroom, to save her own skin, sending Mia into a confused state. She honestly cannot retrieve those painful memories to remember what she did. Empathetic relationships do however form with other survivors. Young Felicia (Nastya Golubeva Carax) who lost both her parents, and Thomas, the birthday guy, who is going through multiple operations to restore function in his leg.
Her journey takes her to the streets of Paris where refugees, a step ahead of the police, earn a living hawking souvenirs
As the film narrative opens out, it includes not just customers and cute tourists, but the wait and kitchen staff who hail from places like Mali and Senegal. We hear it said that were it not for the African immigrants, legal and otherwise, it would be impossible for Parisians to eat out. As Mia begins to recover repressed memories, the journey takes her from the kitchens to the streets of Paris where refugees, a step ahead of the police, earn a living hawking souvenirs.
A young waitress who was working at the restaurant on the night, Nour (Sofia Lesaffre), is able to offer Mia some vital information. In doing so, she recalls the young Australian man (played by Yoann Barrenechea) who she was hiding with in crawl space between air shafts. Thinking they were going to die, they had shared a kiss.
If only this genuinely poignant, heart-rending moment wasn’t accompanied by an address to camera by the character himself. Unfortunately, Barrenechea spoke without a trace of an Australian accent. It was a distracting detail which had me thinking that Winocour might find herself another casting director.
That said, both the recent impressive French drama November and Paris Memories have avoided representing the ghastly events of November 2015 and concentrated on the police hunt and the social impact, respectively. Winocour’s film goes a step further. Tempered with restraint and enhanced by moving performances, it is an ode to our shared humanity.
First published in the Canberra Times on 12 November 2023. Rotten Tomatoes also publishes Jane’s reviews