OPENING FILM

We are delighted to welcome director Robert Guédiguian to the first screening.

In 2009, acclaimed French filmmaker Robert Guédiguian brought his gripping wartime thriller THE ARMY OF CRIME to Cambridge. This year he returns with his latest work, an absorbing drama inspired by a Victor Hugo poem. Despite losing his job as a shipyard worker though voluntary redundancy, Michel, a proud trade unionist, lives happily with Marie-Claire. The pair have been a devoted couple for thirty years – their children and grandchildren are their pride and joy, and they have close group of friends. But their happiness is shattered when two masked gunmen break into their home, tie them up and rob them of everything – including Michel's severance package. By chance, the couple discover that the brutal attack was organized by one of the young workers laid off along with Michel. But when they set the wheels in motion to have the assailants brought to justice, they discover that true justice is not as straightforward as it might seem.

Source: Cinephile

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Reviews Add a review

14 September 2012

Chris Shaw wrote

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Director Robert Guediguian attended the opening night of the 2012 Cambridge Film Festival to introduce, and answer questions about, his new film “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”. The film is set around the port of Marseilles and the opening scene, in a shipbuilding yard, shows a gathering of workers summoned to a meeting, where names are being drawn from a cardboard box by Michel, a grizzled trade union leader in his mid fifties. It becomes clear that the 20 workers whose names have been randomly selected, including that of Michel himself, are to be made redundant, the company a victim of economic downturn and the wider effects of globalisation. Over the following weeks, Michel accustoms himself to domesticity whilst his wife, Marie-Claire, earns money from her job as a home-help. The two have been married and in love for 30 years, enjoy the companionship of friends, children and grand-children, and live in a pretty pantiled cottage in the old part of town, with a view across winding alleys to the harbour and the glittering Mediterranean . Michel’s career as a trade-unionist has required him to fight battles for workers’ rights and jobs, but now, although prematurely redundant, the couple can have a degree of comfort with her small income, his severance pay and the reliability of a union pension.

As an anniversary gift for Michel and Marie-Claire, family and friends have joined together to present them with something special, tickets for the holiday of a lifetime: a trip to Africa. However, one evening during a family game of cards, hoodlums break in, beat and tie up the group, and steal tickets, redundancy money and credit cards. The violent event is the trigger for the couple to look again at their beliefs, philosophies and values, to question the paths their lives have followed to this point and the choices they have made along the way, and to make decisions on how things should be in the future.

After the screening of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, the director gave the audience some insights into his own outlook on life and political views. The film was suggested by a poem by Victor Hugo, which is quoted in the end-credits, and it is clear that Robert Guediguian shares that master’s humanist philosophy. Watching “Kilimanjaro” one is strongly reminded of the films of fellow humanist Mike Leigh, and especially “Another Year”: the two directors fascinate us with portrayals of the minutiae of married life, the quiet companionship but depths of familiarity, knowledge and wisdom which result when two people have shared their lives for over 30 years.

In “Kilimanjaro”, Ariane Ascaride’s performance as Marie-Claire is absolutely captivating: we can see why Michel is still in love with her after all these years! Jean-Pierre Darroussin portrays Michel in a strong, quiet and thoughtful manner; the picture of the couple they present to us is totally believable. Perhaps the film was just one act too long: there seemed to be a natural conclusion, a moment of revelation and realisation when it would have felt right to stop, and maybe the final couple of scenes were not entirely necessary….but you may disagree!

Whether you find the story ultimately convincing depends upon your view of human nature, but the details of the narrative are not what matters. As the director pointed out, no film can be considered naturalistic, and to describe any film as such is to condemn it. The story is only the vehicle through which the author expresses his concerns.

14 September 2012

The Agent Apsley wrote

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011) is a sort of fable for our time, with strikingly strong performances, both from (as Michel) Jean-Pierre Darroussin (whom I knew from Conversations with my Gardener (2007)), and Ariane Ascaride as Marie-Claire, a couple whose integrity and good hearts are at its centre.

Subject to an event that leaves all shaken, but especially Marie-Claire's sister Denise (Marilyne Canto is very sympathetic), the course of things unfolds in a manner consistent with not only justice, but also responsibility and reconciliation, almost a modern Dostoyevsky, I often enough felt (which maybe Victor Hugo, a poem of whose is the film's starting-point, and he had in common).

Certainly, although The Angels' Share (2012) is equally good natured and hopeful, this film makes a challenge to our thoughts and prejudices far beyond it: this film treats of its themes seriously, whereas Leigh launches into a romp from whose end the dark and threatening scenes from earlier seem far removed - director Robert Guédiguian has sketched a world that acknowledges deep-seated human emotions of envy, resentment and greed, but wants to offer those who feel them a way back.

The centre is the family, whether a party for Michel and Marie-Claire (to which he has invited the other nineteen whose posts were made redundant at the same time as his), them playing cards with Denise and her husband Raoul (a good part for Gérard Meylan), or at the home of their son Gilles and his partner / wife, and the tensions, more or less freely articulated, between them because of their differing viewpoints: in Leigh's Glasgow, the family has little or nothing to offer any more.

Guédiguian answered questions after the screening, and some (as well as some observations from the audience) were of a rather political or judgemental nature, as if depicting certain truths, rather than presenting a story, were the film's purpose. As he sought to stress, cinema is not reality, and the Internet was not there because a screen is not that inetersting, and the focus was elsewhere.

I asked about the use of Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défuncte, which is a beautiful theme, both thoughtful and with a hint of real, not over-blown, sadness to it: he did not comment on that theme in particular, but that, classical or otherwise, the music is fitted early in the editing and has to be what belongs. Later, I aked about the Hemingway novel with the same titles as this film, assuming that there was no connection, as the origins appeared in a song sung at the anniversary party. This was apparently a very popular song in the 60s, and Guédiguian did not comment on whether the Hemingway associations carried any regrettable or deliberate overtones.