Cannes 2015: French films on the crisis acclaimed Holland – BBC

The president was quick to greet Sunday evening the winners of the Cannes Film Festival. Yet these award winners are giving away a positive image of the country.

Since the announcement of the Cannes prize list, Sunday, May 24, Francois Hollande and several government members were quick to salute the hat-trick on Twitter.

With these prizes awarded to French – the Golden Palm in Jacques Audiard, the Best Actor award and feminine to Vincent Lindon and Emmanuelle Bercot, for their role in The Market Act and My King – the President of the Republic underlined in a statement “the diversity, openness and creativity of French cinema”.

The seventh art nevertheless seems hexagonal struggle to return the compliment. On the screens at Cannes, Dheepan like The Law of Market even have rather sharp tongue against the French society malfunctions. Must we be welcomed?

The Gold Award Dheepan depicts the harsh reality of the suburbs where many migrants landing. Jacques Audiard follows the journey of a Tamil former soldier who fled Sri Lanka and is confronted with more violence in the host country. Moreover, the hero even ended up leaving the Hexagon and moved to London in the UK. With this feature film, French director presents a bleak picture of contemporary France, even if he defends himself to make his film a “policy statement”.

The Market Act , meanwhile, is not more tender. The first scene is a scathing realism and echoes a situation experienced by more than 2.25 million French. Thierry, played by Vincent Lindon, is a long-term unemployed. Faced with an advisor job center, he evokes his difficulties in finding work and incomprehension of the system: the training that sends him eventually be unnecessary to land a job. Throughout the movie, the absurdity of a world economy increasingly abstruse is underlined. Insecurity, distress and moral conflicts are the focus of this feature film by Stéphane Brizé.

So it is hard to rejoice in such bitter observations. Yet Hollande says The Market Act is a “brotherhood message to the world of work” and that Dheepan examines those “who seek by exile build a future in France. ” If he had paid more attention to the content of the films, he would yet come to realize that France described in these two feature films is not shown in its best light. When the developers see the glass half empty, the president prefers to see it as half full.