The World After Us (French)
Rating: * ½
This charming French film is all over the place. Debutant director Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas lets the camera roll with seeming aimlessness, to capture the adrift rhythms of her hero Labidi’s journey in Paris from struggling writer,inadequate son and undesirable lover to…well, see for yourself where Labidi lands himself at the end(hint: it’s not the doghouse).
The innate charm of this simple shower of a shimmying lifescape is in its refusal to go by the rules…quite like Labidi who won’t be pigeonholed . This film too kicks stereotypes in the butt with great gusto.
But oops, I stray, much like the film’s hero and the film. The World After Us is at heart, a love story of two struggling youngsters trying to find their place in life. Labidi and the love of his life Elisa are played with superb stillness by Aurélien Gabrielli and Louise Chevillotte. They are so into their characters that our participation as spectators seems oddly incongruous.
Suffused in a gentle semi-awake half-dream mood, The World After Us is strangely real and yet dreamlike. It trots across a side of Paris we haven’t seen before. The libraries and the bylines come alive prodding our responses to the romantic stimuli.
Unlike many love stories this one doesn’t only focus on the lovers. The supporting characters are memorable in their own way. Aleksei, Labidi’s roommate and lifelong bestfriend, and Labidi’s parents who insist on funding his struggle in Paris although they can hardly afford it, Labidi’s book agent …these are real individuals in a screenplay that could easily have fallen into trite times.
Director Louda Ben Salah-Cazana chooses to go the other way. She is not afraid to stumble and fall with her struggling writer-hero in the dark unknown future. She knows what most people aspiring to break free of their destiny do: life sucks, but you have to keep extracting the elixir of life from what you get as your share of life.
