Les revenants

What if one day all the dead people from the last 10 years came back to life? That morbid question is the basis for the first feature by Robin Campillo. The answer given by the director certainly does not provide a zombie-slasher, which was also not to be expected. Before Les revenants, together with Laurent Cantet, Campillo wrote the screenplay for the film L’emploi du temps and he was editor of Cantet’s Ressources humaines. The way in which Campillo uses the sudden worldwide invasion of millions of dead – a very original metaphor for asylum seekers – to look at the problems of our welfare state is very original. All of those dead people also need food and shelter, a retirement pension or the possibility of returning to their old jobs. In addition, Les revenants is also an old-fashioned, exciting and moving story about death and mourning. Parents who get their dead child back and lovers who are reunited are at first deliriously happy. The dead may be a little slower and absent-minded, but apart from that they look very healthy. After the initial euphoria, however, it becomes apparent that the ‘returnees’ do not function entirely normally. They hardly sleep and meet up at night in the strangest places. In the meantime, the government orders study after study of this new population group, without any concrete results. A brilliantly constructed and committed thriller with a penetrating, musty smell. (SdH)