‘The Fourth Wall’: Marrakech Review

Dir. David Oelhoffen. France/Luxembourg/Belgium 2024. 116mins

French drama The Fourth Wall muses on the connection between theatre and political actuality, however the titular partition largely stays intact in a drama firmly grounded in trendy historical past. Set in Lebanon within the early 80s, and following a theatre group’s staging of Antigone through the build-up to some of the infamous occasions in Center Jap battle, this extremely literary movie is an intellectually bold however typically ponderous providing from French writer-director David Oelhoffen, finest recognized for 2014’s Far From Males.

 Intellectually bold however typically ponderous

Modern resonance, given the current intensification of occasions in Lebanon, plus an approachable if typically glum lead from fashionable French common Laurent Lafitte (not too long ago seen in hit costumer The Depend Of Monte Cristo) ought to give the movie attraction to serious-minded audiences on the competition circuit. Le Pacte will launch in France in January 2025. 

Primarily based on the 2013 French novel by Sorj Chalandon, the movie – shot in Lebanon and Luxembourg – begins in Lebanon in 1983, when French actor Georges (Lafitte) finds himself underneath fireplace. The motion then jumps again a 12 months to France, the place Georges agrees to journey to Beirut to take over a manufacturing of Jean Anouilh’s play Antigone for his critically in poor health director good friend Sam (Bernard Bloch). Aided by driver Marwan, from Beirut’s Druze group (Armenian-French reliable Simon Abkarian), Georges meets Sam’s solid, comprising a number of of Beirut’s co-existing and conflicting communities. Amongst them are Marwan’s son Nakad (Tarek Yaacoub), a younger Catholic lady (Tracy Younes), and Palestinian Imane (Manal Issa), who performs the classical insurgent heroine Antigone – and for whom Georges falls exhausting.

With a view to proceed the manufacturing, because of be staged near Beirut’s Inexperienced Line of demarcation, Georges should negotiate with cautious political leaders and kinfolk of solid members, together with Shi’ite Muslims and, one actor’s brother, a Christian Phalangist militant. Georges retains his solid motivated, explaining the character of Anouilh’s remodeling of classical tragedy – which, first carried out in 1944, was a parable for French resistance to occupation, which clearly has resonances for Lebanon. Above all, Georges factors out that the essence of classical tragedy lies within the characters’ future being irrevocably predetermined – which can clearly be the case on this movie.

Oelfhoffen doesn’t over-stress the formal play between the cinematic and the theatrical – Georges watches his actors on video, and one rehearsal is partly shot from the entrance, as if on a stage, however in any other case the self-reflexivity is within the drama and the typically solemnly discursive dialogue. Photographed by Guillaume Deffontaines, the movie evokes an intense, starkly unromanticised sense of what on a regular basis Beirut might need been like at this era. A big solid brings sharply outlined characterisations to very various roles – Abkarian contributing his regular stalwart gravitas, and Manal Issa (Danielle Arbid’s Parisienne, Sally El-Hoseini’s The Swimmers) radiating an ebullient, defiant vitality that matches each Antigone and Imane.

Much less convincing is Lafitte, normally adept at combining affability and emotional weight in roles critical and comedian, however a bit of earnestly lugubrious right here, as if encumbered by the burden of ethical and historic duty. Admittedly, he’s challenged by a drama that jumps from the contemplatively downbeat to the horror of real-life atrocity – and that stretches plausibility when Georges is named on to develop into a participant, not simply an observer, in a direct and really brutal settling of scores. Whereas Oelhoffen’s intentions are by no means apart from eminently sober and intellectually looking, it’s this dramatic flip specifically that makes it exhausting to not see this French protagonist’s journey as considerably partaking of battle tourism.