La faute à Voltaire

Jallel is a 27-year-old Tunisian immigrant who arrives illegally in Paris. He manages to elude the police using a forged passport. His roaming existence starts. He stays alive by selling fruit and reading poetry in Metro stations. He does not have many illusions, nor much hope. A marriage of convenience may solve his problems, but this plan doesn’t work out. An attack of depression puts him into the psychiatric hospital. The end of his tribulations would appear to be in sight when some peace and friendship comes into his life, but then harsh reality reappears inevitably, a reality he has so far managed to escape: the law.Despite the serious subject, Kechiche’s film is not all misery. Partly thanks to the powerful acting, France is humorously exposed as the country which only claims to stand for liberty and equality. Not much has come of the ideals of Voltaire, if you look at the story of Jallel and his fellow sufferers.Abdel Kechiche: ‘There’s no such thing as a clandestine immigrant. There are men, women, and human beings who aspire to a better life (…) Choosing to follow the path taken by one of these men, sharing his experience, trying not to concentrate on what might be the more sensational aspects but on real preoccupations, daily problems and difficulties, desires and fears, dreams and everyday life, I have tried to overcome that cruel distance that let us behind difference and indifference.’