Salem: the successful post-Shéhérazade by Jean-Bernard Marlin (review)
The filmmaker returns to Marseille with this superb Shakespearean romance, which confirms his outsider status.
Djibril, locked in a psychiatric hospital, remembers his past. As a child, he was a prominent member of a Comorian gang, the Sauterelles. He was also in love with Camilla, a gypsy from the enemy band of the Crickets. It's well known: opposites attract. Until the day Camilla got pregnant… Six years after the bombshell Scheherazade, Jean-Bernard Marlin returns to set up his camera in Marseille with this Shakespearean drama (discovered in Cannes last year) which risks disconcerting his early fans.
In an anti-realist movement, the film evokes this forbidden love through astonishing fantastic sequences. This material allows Marlin to question a social phenomenon that is too rarely mentioned in French cinema: do false prophets hold a part of the truth? Surely, but the filmmaker does not bother to explain his point, preferring to leave the spectator a part of imagination while focusing on the romantic dimension of his story, succeeding in making 13 year old children pass for adults fully aware of their life choices.
The film reaches a peak in its second hour, as the narrative returns to the present: Djibril, now in his twenties, is confronted by a girl he never had the chance to meet. From then on, the romantic drama gives way to a magnificent learning story. The spontaneity of the actors, chosen during a wild casting process, makes the whole thing even more moving.
Of Jean-Bernard Marlin. With Dalil Abdourahim, Oumar Moindjie, Wallen El Gharbaoui… Duration 1h43. Released May 29, 2024
