Athena, the latest shock film by Romain Gavras, is a kind of Greek tragedy which tells the story of four brothers from a working-class neighborhood in the Parisian suburbs which will fall into chaos after a tragedy: Idir, the youngest, dies after suffered police violence. The destinies of his brothers will then be linked: while Abdel is recalled from the front, Karim wishes to avenge the stolen life of his brother. Moktar, a drug dealer, is disturbed by the uprisings in the neighborhood which are harming his business. If the film Athena had previously been praised by critics, acclaimed at the Venice Film Festival and admired among others by rapper Jay Z (Gavras notably directed his music video “No Church in the Wild”), and even within our editorial staff, the film has received a lot of criticism since its official release on Netflix. A gap is widening on its reception, in particular between a certain sphere of cinema and those of the people the film is supposed to represent. Inès Seddiki, founder of Ghett’up, an association which works to improve the image of neighborhoods with general public, explains on Twitter: “When a film is adored by critics and hated by the people it portrays, you have to ask yourself questions. We prefer not to be represented in the cinema than disfigured in your films.” Karim.Z, a REP+ teacher and also a resident of a working-class district, spokesperson with Konbini for the same criticism: “I have everything was first taken by the beauty of the scenes, in particular the sequence shots filmed in such a way as to fall ‘in love’ with the decor. But very quickly, the countless clichés about the suburbs, the fantasy of ultraviolence in our neighborhoods and the dehumanization of the actors made me reflect on the impact this film could have on the youngest. This film, without any real moral, does not seem to convey even the shadow of a hope or a bright future.”“Feeding ignorance around the suburbs”For Jamie, a resident of Évry, where was filmed Gavras’ film, the film is “touching” but also “frustrating” and “disappointing”: “I was touched to see Évry in front of the camera. I found that the staging exploits the twists and turns of the slab of the Parc aux lièvres very well. Coming from Évry, visually it was quite gratifying to see all these decorations set up in the neighborhood, because it shows that it is possible. But when it came to the script, I was frustrated and disappointed. Évry is a breeding ground for artists and young people who are truly conscious and realistic about the France in which we live. It was not exploited at all by the film. Staging the youth of Évry in this way is to fuel ignorance around the suburbs. For me, it’s a film of ‘bandeurs’ de cité because it feeds all the clichés that already exist. We were only shown thugs and people with whom we wouldn’t take the time to talk, estates that looked like impassable fortified castles, families in great precariousness… Commuters know that our neighborhoods are much richer than that. ”On Twitter again, some also claim that Athena is a film of “bandeur de cités”, where others denounce a “collection of clichés”. What is said in short is that after Les Misérables, Bac Nord, La Haine or Ma 6-T va crack-er, the representation of working-class neighborhoods in French cinema seems to be going in circles. At the helm to defend Athena, some claim his aestheticism, his undeniable technique and sensational sequence shots. According to Romain Gavras, the setting is even “almost the main character of the film”. Others, always in the defense, advance its fictitious character on which it would therefore be necessary to take a step back. However, the inspirations and references can disturb the reading of the film. In one of the final scenes of Athena, the young people are ordered by the police to undress and kneel, hands on their heads, in ranks. Difficult to watch this sequence without thinking of the collective arrest of high school students from Mantes-la-Jolie which had widely shocked and caused controversy in 2018. 151 young people were then humiliated, put on their knees, hands on their heads then filmed by a policeman who rejoiced by saying in the video: “Here is a class that keeps itself wise.”Yessa Belkhodja, a member of the Mantois Youth Defense collective, revolted on social networks: “Gavras went to search in the the most sordid phantasmagorical imagination of the police. I imagine these kids in front of their screens, in front of this scene, those who suffered these atrocious moments… And it was not cinema.”From the first minutes of Gavras’ work, we also see Yassine Bouzrou , a highly publicized French criminal lawyer who pleads in particular for the case of Adama Traoré, a young black man who died after a police intervention, a drama once again very real. In Athena, Yassine Bouzrou seems to play her own role. What questions about the fiction in the story of Gavras. However, it is indeed Gavras’ wish, who explains that he did not want to make a sociological film and that his intention was to “sublimate reality in mythology”. The hyperviolence, the characters represented in packs, hooded , in uniform, visible but invisible, their inability to communicate other than through screams and insults… Journalist and writer Louisa Yousfi dedicated an Instagram post to these accumulations of clichés, even caricatures, in which she wrote: “[…] From the 3rd minute, the 3rd I’m not kidding: nausea rises from the bottom of my guts. Faced with the inanity of the script, the political stench, the production brought to bear on a thousand-year-old racist fantasy which French cinema has been relaying for decades without anyone managing to oppose anything other than the opposite scheme: the poor little natives to save. This fucking alternative that always corners us: larvae or monsters.” While this is indeed fiction, the political issues surrounding this kind of film are far from being fictional. We cannot therefore deny their political dimension. Also, Lucile Commeaux wrote for France Culture: “Athena puts into images a fantasy of the right and the extreme right, this famous ‘wildness’”. She also writes that this film is “dishonest and bad”. But is Athena really “blessed bread” for the extreme right and its fantasies? The journalist Sihame Assbague, whom we interviewed, is not quite of the same opinion: “To say that this film is ‘blessed bread’ for the far right, it’s a bit of easy criticism. It starts from the premise that the far right needs this kind of story to feed its imagination and its racist vote when this is obviously not the case at all. Moreover, we must not forget that these representations and this constant dehumanization of non-whites and working-class neighborhoods is not the prerogative of the extreme right. We find them in the speeches of a large part of the political and media class. In fact, it’s simple: the image of the non-white, deviant, dangerous, wild and uncontrollable man is a dominant perception in France. It is inherited from the colonial history of this country and it continues to live in people’s minds and to justify certain exceptional measures. It’s not just the far right that propagates and feeds on this imagination: it’s the dominant story!” We remember that for Les Misérables by Ladj Ly, Emmanuel Macron was “overwhelmed by his accuracy” and would have “asked the government to hurry up to find ideas and act to improve living conditions in the neighborhoods.” The President of the Republic had been singled out for these remarks, some finding it surprising that a head of State discovers the state of his country after watching a fictional film – especially since he had, in the end, refused to go to Montfermeil, where he had been invited. For Bac Nord, Marine Le Pen was quick to recover the film as soon as it is released to push its political agenda: However, according to its director Cédric Jimenez, “a film remains a film”. He says he did not want it to be used for far-right campaigns and hated to see his name written next to those of Zemmour or Le Pen. Jimenez for Bac Nord and Gavras for Athena: the two directors both seem struck by the same naivety about the political impact of their films. If Athena is not especially blessed bread for the extreme right, it nevertheless nourishes, in the eyes of people who do not move or little in the popular districts, a caricatural and frustrating imagination for the first concerned. Aesthetics for which Athena is acclaimed wouldn’t it ultimately be fairy tale powder to veil the very weak scenario recycled from a phantasmagorical imagination? The representation of working-class neighborhoods in French films: why not, but shouldn’t we think about changing the disc?
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