03/09/2022 - VENICE 2022: Romain Gavras delivers an adrenaline-fuelled and highly emotional family tragedy that doubles as a potent allegory for the tensions of the French banlieue

Sami Slimane (centre) in Athena

Why do we feel the impulse to ask of banlieue films that they bring something new to the table, in a way we don’t necessarily do of other genres? An uncharitable response would be that film viewers are generally not keen to hear any more about the problems in the suburbs of France’s large cities, on the news every day in the country. A likelier reason, however, is a worry that what are some real, current issues that do urgently need to be addressed, run the risk of being glamourised and reduced to entertainment with each new film treatment. This concern seems to be a major driving force behind Athena [+see also:
trailer
interview: Romain Gavras
film profile], directed by Romain Gavras and co-written with Elias Belkeddar and Ladj Ly, whose interest in representing the tensions of the banlieue no longer needs to be established after his breakout film Les Misérables [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ladj Ly
film profile]. Premiering in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, this film takes a more heightened and poetic approach to the topic of police brutality and inequality in France, through a story of mythological magnitude in line with the epic name of the neighbourhood it is set in and which gives the film its title. 

The movie opens not long after footage has emerged online of a local teenager being attacked and left for dead by a group of what appears to be police officers. In the midst of this tragedy are the victim’s three brothers, each representing a different way of dealing with the tension between the banlieue and the police, but also, on a more allegorical level, with adversity of any kind. Abdel (the hypnotic, handsome Dali Benssalah), a man in the French army who takes his job very seriously, is essentially a poster boy for “integration,” operating from the belief that both parties do want to find a solution. His two brothers clearly disagree, but have opposite responses to what they perceive to be the status quo. The older Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), a drug dealer also involved in weapons trafficking, has chosen to play a game that the younger Karim (Sami Slimane) understands is rigged: the teenager wants to change the rules. He wants the names of the officers involved, and he wants a revolution. 

This extremely symbolic structure is a gamble, pushing as it does against the realism that has come to feel almost compulsory in the cinema of the banlieue. But it works because the film understands that the driving force of tragedy — both for the characters on screen and for the audience — is primal emotion, a feeling of the kind that can overtake even the most sensible person. The breathtaking opening scene, a single-take sequence at least 12 minutes long, seems at first little more than a technically impressive feat almost expected from a spectacular music-video director like Gavras. But by its end, and after an astonishing reveal, the exhilaration we feel also helps us better understand the sequence’s driving force - namely, Karim. We can both feel and intellectually grasp the extent of his rage, as well as his intelligence, for only a person extremely familiar with his neighbourhood and with the inner workings of the police could have carried out such a wild stunt.

The music-video aesthetic of Gavras here is therefore far from superficial, his striking images actually telling us something about whichever character a given section of the film follows. However, alongside the large-scale action, Gavras also spends plenty of time on the faces of his actors. Free from the burden of realism, they are all conduits for pure emotion. Though each represents and follows a different perspective or ideology, they are, in the short and intense period of time seen in the film, led by their feelings — for better and for worse. While Karim lets his anger and grief come out in the form of an elaborate revolt, Abdel spends much of the film tortured by doubt; one of the most breathtaking scenes of the entire festival is the one where he finally breaks and abandons all reason. 

Despite all this, the most shocking part of Athena might be its ending. As it concludes, the film unambiguously suggests that in the fight between the police and the banlieue, all are victims exploited by others who stand to gain from the conflict. That third parties are using existing tensions to advance their own agenda is almost certainly true. But is the idea here that the police and banlieue kids should unite against this common enemy? Or that the police and the government it protects — the party with the most power in this equation — are only victims, in no way responsible for or benefiting from the bloodshed? Your reading may depend on how far from reality and how deep into allegory the propulsive energy of Athena carries you.

Athena was produced by Iconoclast Films and Netflix, and will be released on Netflix worldwide on 23 September. 

Photogallery 02/09/2022: Venice 2022 - Athena

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Alexis Manenti, Anthony Bajon, Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Ted Sarandos, Romain Gavras, Vincent Cassel
© 2022 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso