‘Across The Sea’: Cannes Review

Dir: Saïd Hamich Benlarbi. France/Morocco/Belgium/Qatar. 2024. 112 minutes.

Exile and the friction between goals and actuality are the touchstones for Saïd Hamich Benlarbi’s Throughout The Sea which, like his earlier movie Return To Bollene, highlights the experiences of the north-west African group in France. There are picaresque and romance parts to this vibrant and sometimes poignant decade-spanning story of a Moroccan migrant’s life in Marseille, though the producer-turned-director additionally leans too closely on cleaning soap opera-style coincidences in locations.

Bold work with a novelistic sweep

The Jokers Movies will distribute Throughout The Sea in France after its debut within the Particular Screenings part of Cannes Un Sure Regard and pageant appearances additional afield could observe for this formidable work with a novelistic sweep. Whereas its characters and plotting could be uneven in locations, its coronary heart by no means misses a beat.

Starting in 1990, Nour (Ayoub Gretaa, making his movie debut after a number of tv roles) remains to be in his late twenties with the hopefulness of youth on his facet. We see him making ends meet with a gang of fellow unlawful emigres by way of a petty legal operation. Benlarbi generates the sense of a bunch who discover energy of their frequent roots, emphasised by the rhythmic rai music which accompanies the celebratory occasions that pepper the movie. This vibrancy is additional enhanced by the commonly heat color palette, periodically giving option to cooler blues, however at all times captured in painterly trend by cinematographer Tom Harari.

The time interval, in an period earlier than the ubiquity of cell phones, brings house the acute sense of disconnection brought on by migration. The previous is actually a international nation, particularly when your mum doesn’t need to communicate to you. This distance from ‘house’ additionally makes the purpose of citizenship much more compelling, evidenced by one in every of Nour’s crew selecting a wedding of comfort over his real love.

When a personality talks about developments being due “to destiny” it signifies Benlarbi’s strategy, which is to indicate how Nour is buffeted by these round him till he lastly makes peace with himself. The author/director’s makes an attempt to steadiness realism with plot contrivances that might have sprung from a Dickensian fable result in the drama being reasonably overstuffed when it comes to characters and occasions, however there’s little doubt it retains you guessing as to what would possibly occur subsequent.

The key accident is Nour’s encounter with cop Serge (Grégoire Colin) after his gang is busted. Though this initially looks like a one-off, they cross paths once more, main the older man and his spouse Noémie (Anna Mouglais) taking Nour below their wing. The advanced relationship that develops between the pair, who’re in an open marriage, and Nour drives the remainder of the movie, at the same time as destiny repeatedly intervenes.

Though Nour stays the movie’s lynchpin, Benlarbi additionally retains one eye on the broader ensemble of his mates, weaving collectively a number of strands of plotting in order that we’re in a position to see the sample of exile and acceptance mirrored in several methods elsewhere. The stress between Nour’s personal hopes for the long run and his attachment to his previous come sharply into focus as he returns to his homeland and discovers a unique street he didn’t even realise he may have travelled.

Gretaa is the movie’s ace. He pitches Nour’s character completely as he mentally migrates from his youthful naivety to one thing way more profound, realising the significance of embracing life for what it’s reasonably than what it might need been or may very well be. Mouglais, too, impressively articulates the emotional complexity of her character as Noémie’s needs come more and more to the fore.