France-Canada-Senegal-Mali 2021 125 minutes

Script and staging Robert Guediguian Photography Pierre Milton Music Olivier Alary performers Stéphane Bak, Alice Da Luz, Saabo Balde, Bakary Diombera, Ahmed Dramé, Diouc Koma, Miveck Packa, Issaka Sawadogo

Despite his seniority, Guédiguian remains tireless not only as a filmmaker but also as a chronicler of the world in which we live, and especially of its faults and injustices. On this occasion he leaves his usual Marseille to tell us a story of post-colonialism and socialist utopia. His new job, after the success of Gloria Mundi Yes The house by the sea in the usual minority circuits, those his conscientious cinema can hardly reach because it is already populated by fairly conscientious people, he focuses on the political and social devastation that the countries we consider civilized and advanced leave in those others we dominate without shame or humanity for centuries, whether in Africa or America. This is Mali shortly after its independence with Senegal, another of the countries that co-produced this purely French film. Years of illusion and revolution that the youngest were keen to rebuild from an apparently unbreakable concept of equality and justice, but which came up against the interests already created, imposed both by this colonial domination and by this caste system that prevailed at the heart of these ancestral civilizations and that no one dared or wanted to change over the centuries of history. In this context, Guédiguian imagines a love story that brings us back, although it may seem ridiculous, to the Doctor Zhivago by David Lean, possibly due to the influence of the name of its female lead, Lara. Like them, the protagonists of this story are conditioned by a strongly ideological and dangerously radicalized social revolution after their first attempts at utopian happiness, and also like them they suffer the stigma of sentimental ties generated more by the conventions of the moment than by the call du coeur In this context, Guédiguian tries to refine his usual raw forms but only partially succeeds. Its tendency to underline the political discourse prevails over the rest, which removes the emotion from the whole but reinforces its informative and powerful message of warning about the virulence which still hovers, even more, over our heads, never too much inclined to understand others. suffering and appropriate it in order to move forward in a more solid and lasting conception of social justice. The title’s American spin, which its longtime protagonists cling to, provides a good example of how the best of both worlds, socialism and capitalism, could be combined in our efforts to build a better habitat.