Un Barrage Contre le Pacifique/The Sea Wall
2009; Issue: 76 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Critical Theory
ResumoRithy Panh's Un barrage contre le Pacifique/The Sea Wall was screened as part of the Special Presentations section at this year's festival, coming and going with surprisingly little attention or press. It features a very strong cast including Isabelle Huppert as the Mother, Gaspard Ulliel as her son Joseph, Astrid Berges-Frisbey as her daughter Suzanne and, in supporting but significant roles, Randal Douc as the Chinese businessman M. Jo and the family servant, the Corporal, (whose name is not listed in the abbreviated cast list in the press kit) and is intelligently directed by Rithy Panh. The film is based on Marguerite Duras' semi-autobiographical novel Un barrage contre le Pacifique published in 1950. Generically the film draws from the melodrama and in some ways has the feel of an historical epic as it dramatizes the oppression resulting from French colonialist rule in French Indochina in 1931. It is also a family melodrama as it is about familial relationships. Un barrage contre le Pacifique is, however, far from conventional; it evidences a modernist, almost art house sensibility in its intellectual treatment of the subject matter and characterization, which invites an analytical involvement on the part of the audience, producing an interpretation which suits Duras' narrative. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The film concerns the Mother's losing struggle to hold on to a concession of land she has purchased in French Indochina. She is a widow who has invested all her savings in this land which, although productive, is regularly flooded by sea water, resulting in the loss of her crops. The Mother holds the colonial administration responsible for the family's current state of impoverishment as they sold her the right to work the concession, knowing it was a venture certain to fail. They are also guaranteed the eventual expropriation of the land as the contract stipulates that if the fields are not cultivated they can be repossessed. The Mother realizes she has been exploited by the ruling class of white French colonialists, a group from which she is alienated by her poverty and lack of power. The Mother (who is never identified by name, only by her position in the family) senses that her identity, both as a farmer and as the head of the family, is threatened; her children have grown up and will soon wish to leave her, a situation exacerbated by the tenuous hold she has on her property which is slipping away. She is succumbing to illness, which seems to be a physical manifestation of her feelings of powerlessness and increasing desperation to hold on to her land and her identity. As the Mother's savings dwindle she tries securing a mortgage from the bank but is refused. (It is only when the bank manager notices her relationship with a wealthy Chinese businessman M. Jo that he reconsiders extending her loan.) Ever resourceful, the Mother comes up with a scheme to build a wall to keep the ocean from flooding her land. As fantastic as the idea seems to be, she convinces the indigenous people to aid her, drawing on their shared contempt for the land registry office and the colonialists who exploit them all. The wall, however precarious and doomed to fail, becomes a gesture of protest against an exploitive class and colonial system that is nurtured by greed and injustice. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Panh's film focuses on the politics underlying Duras' fictional narrative that draws heavily from her memoirs. He underplays the details of the sexual relationships that the siblings experience and concentrates on the melodramatic aspects of the story-the struggle of the weak against the oppressors in French Indochina, an inequality compounded by gender and class. The Mother understands the handicap of her gender which may account for her favouring her son Joseph over Suzanne. Joseph is characterized by his abundant machismo; he is described by Suzanne as being wild and handsome, and is impetuous and courageous. …
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