Watch out, spoilers!
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“Loneliness is a great thing, but not when you’re alone.” – B. Shaw
Soous les toits de Paris (directed by Hiner Salim, France, 2007)
I didn’t want to write or even talk about this film, but it won’t let me go, so I decided to say a few words. One friend wrote about this film, I had no idea about the film or the director before, although no, I remembered about another film of this director, Vodka Lemon, another longtime friend wrote about FBK. I want to repeat his definition of that film, and this film is shrill.
In a rather pitiful room under the roof of a house located in the center of Paris, but populated by people clearly not belonging to the prosperous, old Marseille lives, and his life is clearly rolling towards sunset. He has his own very small social circle, consisting of housemate Amar and a sympathetic waitress from nearby cafe Teresa visiting him from time to time, and their relationship is very touching. We hardly see any other people, except for another couple of neighbors, a classical opera addict and his pretty vegetable-store sales girlfriend. Communication between characters is mostly non-verbal. The life of the heroes is routine - a walk around the neighborhood, on Mondays a visit to the pool, which performs the function of a bath for them, after it - a cafe, and so on from day to day. Once Marcel even meets with his son, whom he loves, who has long forgotten his filial duties, although he declares "care" ("if you need anything, call"), the conversation is not glued to them, and the father out of delicacy can not ask him anything. And all nothing, but even this meaningless, but not disturbing at first glance, existence comes to an end. A neighbor dies of an overdose first. Then Amar goes to his homeland. Theresa comes occasionally. Autumn comes with its cold and bad weather, and Marcel’s health is losing more and more. First he walks with a chair, then he can’t do it. Once he even decides to call his son and ask him to visit him, he asked his son about it in the summer, but the answering machine answers him, and the son never appears. However, he hopes to the last, when visiting his patronage sister asks if he has someone who can help him, he says that the son and Teresa. But alas... When Teresa, who has devoted herself to caring for her 93-year-old mother, finally gets out to Marcel and brings him a heater promised in a previous visit, Marcel no longer needs it.
Still, Michelle Piccoli is a great actor (he starred in the film at 83 years old), I have before my eyes his kind of apologetic half-smile, a little absent appearance, all his more and more uncertain movements, senile pattern of behavior is reliable and piercing to goosebumps. Be like him and Milen Demonjo. They are like people in old age, they do not hide their age, for which they are respected and admired. Being a young man, I can say that it takes great courage and even courage to act in such roles.
The language of the film is very simple, thanks to which, apparently, the film makes such a strong impression - no special directorial tricks, a certain generalization of the material, the singularity of the existence of the characters in a certain environment in which there are almost no people - this is a real human loneliness, in which it is most terrible to be on the slope of years. I wish that would not happen to anyone.