Keys to paradise Suffocating from exhaust gases and the overcooking of factory pipes, tired of endless TV soap, hypocrisy and falsehood in relations between people, from melting asphalt, smog, dust, a crowd of constantly rushing, dulled, dull, tired, always struggling with someone, from someone wanting something, unhappy, plagued, driven people, the average urban Frenchman of the end of the 20th century sought to escape anywhere - no matter where, only away from the annoying life of a megapolis. Flight, love, freedom – asked the heart of a man cornered by his own civilization. And with this average man, the filmmakers sought to escape.
The first generation of post-war filmmakers. The New Wave, on the contrary, sought to descend from heaven to earth, contrasting the graceful fairy tales, salon comedies and sloppy adventures of pre-war cinema with the truth of life with all its confusion, dirt, hatred, with all its fears and complexes, seeking to heal its generation humiliated by war, revealing perennial abscesses, rebelling against everything stagnant, ridiculous, old. By the mid-60s, there were fewer and fewer rebels. Some got burned out, some got tamed. Prosperous economic development created a powerful middle class that demanded entertainment. And rebellious youth have been replaced by filmmakers seeking to adapt to the tech boom and economic explosion. They preferred not to speak loudly about problems, they were increasingly laughing and ironic.
And by the mid-70s, motives for escaping into another reality began to appear more and more often - from the problems caused by the economic boom of the 60s, from personal insoluble troubles, from one's own conscience and satiety, which causes boredom and drowsiness, from the fear of loneliness among crowds of identically dressed, driving the same cars, working at the same jobs, people turning into human functions. This desire to be in another place, to touch another life, to feel that he is still able to feel, breathe, live – manifested itself in a variety of genres and forms in a variety of directorial personalities.
Citizens fled to the village (" The recruits go to war, "Escape", "How snow on the head"), to the resorts (a series about "tanned"), in the desert (" Fort Sagan", "It's not me, it's him") and forests (" The plague of fate"), descended under the water (" Blue abys") and soared into the air ("As from aces there was nowhere to run, tried anyway to go away, disappear from the eyes of the inhabitants (#34; I helped myself in the night) (" And, of course, the final scene in Weber’s Fugitives is characteristic of its time: The Exile (Richard) and Nonconformist (Depardieu) take the child simply to nowhere – to be more precise – somewhere, to another, better life, which, they believe, is impossible in the society and the country that raised them, “created” and led to the impossibility of coexistence with others.
Director Philippe de Broca also started with a “new wave” – he helped Chabrol and Truffaut, but his personal paintings are quite different. De Broca is a romantic, eternal wanderer, funny and a little withdrawn. An urban madman who opposes a well-fed society. And all his heroes are. “African” is a natural return to attempts to romanticize reality, escape from it into a world invented or created by himself, where the hero will have the right to live as he wants. It was in "The Misadventures of a Chineseman in China," "Escape," "The Man from Rio," "The Magnificent," "Incorrigible," "Keys of Paradise" and sounded like a swan song in "Amazonia," where one master (De Broca) sent another (Belmondo) into the Amazon jungle, where there was almost nothing real, and it was like the last way. De Broca always sought to find those “keys to paradise”, forcing his heroes to pass fire and water in a variety of alterations.
The heroes of “African” are not calm, passionate, active natures, who do not really know what they want. Both rush away from the usual Parisian quarters in search of inner harmony, and find each other. Harmony can be found only by being close to the one you love, who cares and needs you. And so – even the beautiful African jungle will not save you from loneliness and heart fever.
A beautiful film is sensitive, touching, spiritual, very romantic and how to say it... environmentally friendly. For me, the degree of screen truth is determined primarily by sympathy for the characters, the desire to put yourself in their place, the degree of involvement in the plot. So, when I watch this movie, I want to be in Africa, I fall in love with Deneuve and I understand why Noiré’s character behaves like this. Everything is close to me and understandable in this film, and, looking out the window at the stuffy and lifeless Moscow asphalt, I also want to fly somewhere after my beloved against the background of a blue sky, dispersing the motor noise of a herd of wild animals. I want to disown everything that irritates in this life and at any time sail on my boat from any shore.
This is a beautiful and radiant film, flavored in addition to wonderfully shown exotic Africa (which, by the way, is not idealized at all) and lyrical music, a good adventure story and the story of a saved marriage. There is an “injection with another life” that switches something in people’s souls. And Victor, and Charlotte, and even Planchet's knave, will never be the same after what they've experienced. The life-giving African pill makes us take human values differently, cure cynicism, snobbery, greed. Africa will teach these people to rely on each other, to try to understand each other and to see from those sides that in the usual urban life, never open. And, of course, Africa will help to revive cooled feelings.
Romance, humor, love, flight - it is on these principles built "African", quite consistently expressed the main trends of cinema of his generation. Very true were in their roles Catherine Deneuve and Philippe Noiret. You fall in love with a blonde in almost every role. This one was no exception. Noiret is beautiful in the role of Victor, a powerful fighter for a “clean Africa” and at the same time a coward, who fled from his wife to a place where there will be no need to solve the problems of withering relationships and where there is not so much creeping old age. In this role, he is very ironic, as is the tone of the film in general, saying that wherever you run, it is important to reconcile with yourself first. In peace, a person will find himself anywhere.
“African” is one of my favorite movies. His closest brothers in blood – “Roman with a stone”, “Probably the gods went mad”, “Savage”, “Jaguar” – are also loved by me. I am close to the motives of flight and search, separation from everyday life. And after many years, this soulful film about finding yourself remains in favor of many generations of viewers, achieving a striking effect of purification and forcing again and again to try to find your own paradise with your own Catherine Deneuve.
10 out of 10