Chez nous is a film more important for its content than it is for the realization of it. It's a competently made film, excellent cast and skillfully directed, at the moment didactic and with the questionable motivation of certain characters, but all in all, solidly written. Most important of all, Chez Nous is not a boring movie, it's easily monitored as a social drama and as a political thriller of intrigue.
The Belgian actor and director Lucas Belvaux is a convinced leftist, best seen in his capital work, the trilogy of 2002, and deconstruction of the National Front in Chez Nous which he approaches passionately and dedicated. This was also recognized by the Frontists, so the film was even before the official premiere (first in French cinema and then at the Rotterdam Film Festival) characterized as a political, diffusion campaign against Marine Le Pen.
The similarity is astounding. One of the episodic characters in the film , the president of the right-wing party / movement that inherited / separated from her father, Agnes Dorgelle (Jacob) is a spitted image of Marine Le Pen. The film has a literary origins in the political crime novel Le Bloc that deals with the rise of the daughter on the throne. Back in reality, it seems that "normal" appear to have won another battle (yes, I'm talking about Macron's victory over the ultra-nationalist Le Pen), but not the last one.
Chez nous will not show us what and how to proceed, but it will at least remind us that the wolf cravings remain the same, even when the hair is colored in blue. The site of the plot was a damaged and failed industrial town in the northeast of France. Time for local elections. The National Movement, formed from the National Bloc, desperately seeks a candidate for the position of mayor and finds the ideal photo-robot in the likeness of a sacrificed nurse and single mother Pauline (Dequenne) whom everyone loves and respects.
The story that the nationalists repeat is that they are not some terrible fascists like in those times, but simply the patriots who care for the ordinary people and the ordinary little man left by the liberal elites in a jungle in which governs poverty, as well as aggressive immigrants, while the Movement defends typical French and national values, if necessary Christianity, if necessary, secularism. The mediator in manipulation is a respected doctor (Dussollier) whom Pauline is grateful for taking care of her dying mother.
Our nurse very quickly finds herself being instructed and learned what, when and how to say, and the reactions of her environment are divided. However, the real problem and real obstacle is her old boyfriend Stankowiak (Gouix), who was once a member of the militant wing of the Bloc, who claims he has now calmed down. What is valid for a political option is also true for individuals with it, from the highest to the lowest levels: wolf, hair, wit. Thus, modern nationalists and alt-right bullying may avoid racist terminology, but it will be very well known who is meant to use a racial neutral term such as "bastards", not to talk about those with a religious connotation: "extremists," " fundamentalists "or" jihadists. "
Thus, they will pack their para-political poison in different packaging depending on the target group - one is for disadvantaged workers, other rich people, the third scared babies, and the fourth full of testosterone ready to fight somebody. Thus, after all, it will model the phrases from the program, and even the physical appearance of the candidates according to the needs and requirements of the political market. But like all fascists and bastards, only fascists and bastards they will remain.
Belvaux's motivation for this kind of film is certainly partly political, but that doesn't entirely stand out. It's still a fiction that doesn't even mimic another phenomenon in the French political scene: the rise of left-wing populism, which is different from the right one by iconography, while the rhetoric is equally fluid, and in the center stands the famous construct of the ideal, unmistakable and sinless ordinary people whom elites and immigrants cheat in the wake of globalization.
This was my translation from Croatian to English from Lupiga article ''Chez Nous: Ovo ''nije'' film o Marine Le Pen'' by M.Stoiljkovic
