Ouistreham: the winning return of Emmanuel Carrère to the cinema (review)

The adaptation of Quai de Ouistreham, by Florence Aubenas, is programmed on France 2. The director continues his reflection on the part of vampirism inherent to the profession of writer.

Released in early 2022 on the big screen, Ouistream will be visible this evening from 9:10 p.m. on France 2, after the opening ceremony of the 77th Cannes Film Festival (see you at 7 p.m. on the same channel). First advises you.

Emmanuel Carrère was supposed to have finished with cinema. In the first pages of Kingdomhe explained that the realization of The moustache, in 2005, made him understand that he was not made for that. He has clearly changed his mind, although in reality his adaptation of Ouistreham quaythe investigative book by Florence Aubenas, serves above all to extend her concerns as a writer by other means.

The heroine of the film, played by Juliette Binoche (and whose name is not Florence Aubenas, but Marianne Winckler) is a Parisian writer who registers at the Pôle Emploi in Caen under a false identity, to be able to better understand the reality of contemporary precariousness. She will find a job cleaning the Ouistreham ferries at night and, in the process, make friends with some colleagues. More than Aubenas, who had a social observation to make, it is the moral questions that the writer asks himself that interests Carrère here.

Basically, the one who writes is a vampire, a misfit who breaks into reality, a liar – even if he intends to bring out a truth. Ouistreham can be seen at least as much as a Ken Loach-style social film as an infiltration thriller, where you wonder when the agent will be caught undercover, both hero and bastard. The film also reveals a stunning non-professional actress, Hélène Lambert, who holds a candle to Binoche in the role of the betrayed friend. The kind of miraculous apparition that, for now, can only happen in the cinema.

Trailer :