LE MONDE'S OPINION - NOT TO BE MISSED
For the past 10 years, Boris Lojkine has been shooting fictions, strongly tinged with reality, around the African continent. He films those who flee it (a couple of emigrants on their way to Europe in Hope, in 2014), those who travel there at the risk of their lives (photographer Camille Lepage in Camille, 2019). And now, with L'Histoire de Souleymane ("The Story of Souleymane"), one of those who successfully made the journey out – but at what price?
The setting is Paris, and the hero of this breathless drama is Souleymane, a 20-something native of Guinea and undocumented migrant waiting for his legal status to be granted. The character owes much to the story of its (excellent) actor, Abou Sangare. He has three imperatives, all of which feed into the film's plot: earning enough to eat, putting a roof over his head and preparing for his asylum interview.
On the outside, you might think you've seen this type of story too often and that it's anything but romantic. It's quite the opposite: relatively unseen and full-on romance. We know the reason, which lies in the title of a canonical film: Rosetta (1999) by the Dardenne brothers, with Emilie Dequenne in every shot as the heroine fighting hand and fist against precariousness, intensified and magnified by the hand-held camera. Since then, the film has been copied to satiety, with few worthy emulators. Louise Wimmer (Cyril Mennegun, 2012) was one, and Souleymane another. Three titles, three names. In other words, films that set the tone, placing the individual at the center – etymologically that which is indivisible, in other words, unique.
Like an assurance of this integrity, we see another one of the great virtues of this Dardenian-inspired cinema: the deliberate absence of discourse and morality. Pure behaviorism takes the viewer right along with the hero. His most trivial problems become ipso facto those of the viewer, all the more so when the latter understands how vital they are to the character.
In Souleymane's case, the cleverness of the screenplay – which doesn't invent anything new – consists in showing us just how fragile a balance this character's life rests on. Borrowing (with a heavy debt) the identity of a fraudster in order to work as a deliveryman, pedaling day and night to the beat of the clock, running to catch the bus to the emergency shelter. All while he mentally rehearses the supposedly credible story that another swindler teaches his compatriots in preparation for their asylum interview.
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