Petit Bulletin GRENOBLE - Cinema Grenoble: review of the film "Amin": Philippe Faucon and the (magnificent) invisible By Philippe Faucon (Fr, 1h31) with Moustapha Mbengue, Emmanuelle Devos... by Vincent Raymond

A construction worker in France, Amin rarely returns to Senegal to see his family. Living in a home, his horizon is limited to his neighbors, sharing the same daily life. During a construction site at a private home, Amin is undertaken by Gabrielle, the owner of the premises. An affair begins...

Back to cinema 2018: and here are the films that will make the next few months

Samia, Fatima and now Amin. Philippe Faucon's titles transparently announce their programmatic ambition: to tell stories at a human level. What may seem insignificant turns out to be unfathomably rich, since his films reveal characters-worlds on the fringes of common narratives, whose lives are as worthy of being told as those, haphazardly, of neurasthenic teachers from the ^15th arrondissement of Paris.

In fact, Amin leads several simultaneous lives, between the world "here" (that of expatriation by necessity where he fulfills his tasks with prudent discretion) and the "over there", where his salaries allow you to be considered a benefactor. A life in yoyo, cyclical (the film opens and closes with an almost identical image, insisting on the mechanical repetitiveness of things), singular and representative of a thousand others.

Amin, Abdelaziz, Gabrielle and the others...

Both an individual in his own right and a symbol, Amin is also a ferryman in the story, "activating" at each of his encounters other existences, whose specific problems we follow by contiguity: Amin's wife revolting against an overly "protective" brother-in-law; his colleague Abdelaziz condemned to a derisory retirement after a black career, or the ex and the daughter of Gabrielle, badly assuming this socially transgressive relationship. Far from making a catalog or a millefeuille, this range of situations densifies the realism, offering Amin what was unfortunately missing in Samba (2014) by Nakache & Toledano.

We regret, however, the choice of the poster focusing the attention (and the expectation of the public) on a single episode of the film: the relationship between the black worker and the white woman. Admittedly, it constitutes a strong moment, but it would be misleading to reduce Amin to it, who is no more the updating of All the others are called Ali by Fassbinder than an inverted remake of Romuald and Juliette by Coline Serreau! A clumsy concession to the advertising allowing "to expose" the star Emmanuelle Devos, this simplistic misinterpretation is the only false note in the complex score of this film-fable.

Aminde Philippe Faucon (Fr, 1h31) with Moustapha Mbengue, Emmanuelle Devos, Fantine Harduin…

amin

By Philippe Faucon (Fr, 1h31) with Moustapha Mbengue, Emmanuelle Devos...

By Philippe Faucon (Fr, 1h31) with Moustapha Mbengue, Emmanuelle Devos...

Amin came from Senegal to work in France nine years ago. He left behind his wife Aïcha and their three children. In France, Amin has no other life than his work, no friends other than the men who live in the home. Aïcha only sees her husband once or twice a year, for one or two weeks, sometimes a month. . She accepts this situation as a de facto necessity: the money that Amin sends to Senegal provides a living for several people. One day, in France, Amin meets Gabrielle and an affair begins. At first, Amin is very restrained. There is the problem of language, of modesty. Until then, separated from his wife, he led a life devoted to duty and knew that he had to remain vigilant.