Actress Sandrine Bonnaire
with director Gaël Morel
CATCH THE WIND (Prendre le Large) B
France (103 mi) 2017 d: Gaël
Morel
Gaël Morel got his start as a young teenage actor
discovering his own sexual identity in André Téchiné’s brilliant film, Wild
Reeds (Les Roseaux Sauvages) (1994), essentially a story about discovering
one’s true nature, set amidst a backdrop of what was an extremely divisive
colonialist French war in Algeria, happening simultaneously to America sending
young men off to Vietnam, where there is an undercurrent of racial animosity
expressed towards Algerians on French soil.
This film comes full circle, flipping the script, sending a contemporary
French woman to Tangiers in Morocco where she can suffer the same indignities
of being treated as an outsider, labeled “Frenchie,” where she is constantly
singed out, ridiculed, and mistreated for her association with the former
French colonial rule. The aftereffects
of colonialism are striking, as despite gaining their independence in 1956
following forty years of French and Spanish colonial rule, Morocco has never
evolved into democratic rule, prohibiting parties that do not accept Islam or
the regime of a monarchy, temporarily suspending newspapers or TV media outlets
for negative criticism of the King, inflicting harsh fines, while it is common
for youths under twenty to languish in prison for up to three years even before
the start of any trial, where prison conditions are overcrowded and in a state
of disrepair. On a positive note,
Morocco is one of the more progressive Middle-Eastern states in the area of
women’s rights, with recent Moudawana (Ups
and Downs of the Moroccan Family Code • Talk Morocco) reforms raising the
minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18, granting women the right to initiate
divorce, increasing custodial rights after divorce, making husbands and wives
fully equal, though more than half of divorced men fail to pay alimony. Women’s access to justice, however, is limited,
particularly in rural and suburban areas due to poverty and illiteracy, where
domestic violence complaints are often ignored.
The overwhelming majority of the population is Arabic, while 97% are
Sunni Muslim. Excessive use of force
targeted against protesters or demonstrations is common, while less than 6% of
the labor force is unionized, making it extremely difficult to organize,
basically all but impossible, so workers refrain from doing so, fearing job
loss. The government has the power to
suppress strikes and prosecute workers that initiate them. For those used to European protections,
living and working here can be an eye-opening experience, which becomes the
underlying premise of this film, opening a new world for the uninitiated,
introducing viewers to a new vantage point, placing yourself in someone else’s
shoes.
It was Maurice Pialat’s À
Nos Amours (To Our Loves) (1983) that introduced us to the radiant beauty
and incomparable delights of Sandrine Bonnaire, appearing so fiercely
independent in Agnès Varda’s Vagabond
(Sans toit ni loi) (1985), teaming up with Isabelle Huppert in Claude
Chabrol’s La
Cérémonie (1995), working with Jacques Rivette, playing the lead character
in JOAN OF ARC Pt’s I and II (1994), while working with him again in SECRET
DEFENSE (1998). After having directed
Catherine Deneuve in AFTER HIM (Après Lui) 2007, co-written by Christophe
Honoré, then Béatrice Dalle in OUR PARADISE (Notre Paradis) (2011), Morel
centers this film on Bonnaire’s completely unpretentious performance which sets
the tone for the rest of the film. Morel
was born in Villefranche-sur-Saône, a lovely French village of 30,000 residents
set in the rolling hills of the Rhône region, which is the initial setting of
this film, as Édith Clerval (Bonnaire) is a middle-aged machine operator in a
textile factory (the same one where the director’s father worked), living alone
in her old family home, but times are changing, with factories moving out of
the country seeking cheaper labor costs, offering a severance package to the
French workers before closing the plant, all of whom take the offer except one,
Édith, an extremely self-reliant woman who can’t imagine herself not working,
so she takes the offer to keep working for the company in Tangiers, despite
having to pay all relocation costs herself.
People think she’s daft, as the wages are nothing like those in France,
but Édith ignored the collective union actions to prevent the plant closing,
which failed, and the pleas from her plant organizer, basically telling her to
get lost. In her working class
upbringing, a person has always been defined by their work, which is what makes
them a productive member of society.
Before she leaves, she takes the train to Paris to alert her son Jérémy
(Ilian Bergala), then has to wait around all day for him to come home from
work, as her visit was unannounced, only to be ignored at a group dinner party
that evening. Jérémy is living with his
gay partner, but in a strange twist, he is the one that didn’t invite her to
the wedding, having trouble apparently with his mother not showing homophobic
anger after his coming out, as most all his friend’s parents are not so
accepting, instead taking a selfish and stand-offish attitude with her,
actually finding her a nearby hotel just to be rid of her, never having the
chance to explain the reason for her visit.
With that, and reportedly “nothing to lose,” she’s off to Morocco,
approximately a half-hour ferry from the Gibraltar crossing to the African
shore.
Immediately life is different, there is culture shock, as
she’s descended upon by young men fighting over who gets to carry her bags for
a fee, literally snatching them out of her hands until she’s rescued by an
older taxi driver who shoos the young men away like pestering flies, arriving
at a nearly empty rooming house with meager accommodations away from the
tourist section. She encounters Mina
(Mouna Fettou), a divorcée (and proud of it, glad to be rid of a no good
husband) living with her nearly grown son Ali (Kamal El Amri), showing an
initial detachment, forcing her to find her way in a strange environment,
needing people on the street to help translate just to find her way to work,
discovering by chance a group taxi that goes right to the factory door. She’s surprised to discover they’ve offered
her a different job, as the only machines they use are old sewing machines,
where the somewhat hostile supervisor Najat (Farida Ouchani) offers no
assistance whatsoever, but is openly suspicious why someone from the more privileged
French mainland would choose to come work there, holding a grudge against her
throughout. Avoided by one and all, she
is shunned at the workplace until befriended by Karima (Nisrine Erradi), who is
barely scraping by, stealing pieces of fabric out at night and making clothes
on her own, which supplements her income.
Just as quickly she is robbed of all her savings, leaving her in the
precarious position of being unable to pay rent, nearly keeling over from
exhaustion and overwork, where Ali sympathizes, offering her food from the
family kitchen. In time, however, things
balance out, where the warmhearted gestures by Mina and Ali become noticeable,
with Ali seeking out familial advice, like a second mother. To Ali’s surprise, she actually feels less
lonely in Tangiers, as the city is more vibrant, populated by streets thriving
with activity, where every day seems to offer something new. It’s only in Tangiers that Édith comes to
appreciate the help of a union, as workers have no rights in what amounts to a
sweatshop, using dangerous equipment that is never serviced, leaving several of
them badly injured. When she reports
this to the boss, as one would routinely do in France, it only makes it worse
on the workers, as the floor is run through fear of losing their jobs,
eliciting a unanimity of total silence.
Seemingly out of spite, Najat continues her crusade against the foreign
worker, delving into deceit, planting stolen fabric in her purse, setting her
up for dismissal on bogus charges, which all but demoralizes Édith, having
little recourse, desperately attempting migratory day labor, anything at all,
which is back-breaking work, especially on an empty stomach, turning tragically
bleak. Morel is no great shakes as a
filmmaker, demonstrating nothing new, stylewise, but his insistence upon giving
this film a social realist, working class perspective is uncommon (likely a
tribute to his father), as is his interest in stripping away the stereotypes
and prejudice surrounding foreigners or people of color, taking meaningful anti-discrimination
efforts, intentionally writing them into the heart of the storyline, becoming
significant to Édith (and viewers), producing memorable characters. But the film was written with Bonnaire in
mind, who is in nearly every frame of the film, rising to a level that is hard
to achieve, immersed in something profoundly difficult, offering a devastating
portrait of a proudly independent woman out on her own. Curiously, closing credit thanks were given
to actress Catherine Deneuve and writer/director Christophe Honoré and his family.
