Evaluation: Habib, la grande aventure

26/08/2022 – Benoît Mariage delivers a transferring chronicle of the tug-of-war of a younger actor, caught between his origins and the future he goals of

Benoît Mariage presents in Competitors on the Angoulême Francophone Movie Competition Habib, la grande aventure, his fifth characteristic, a transient portrait of a younger actor navigating between the injunctions of his career and people of his group.

To start with, Habib was a delicate dreamer. We meet him as he awakes, nonetheless slightly deep in sleep. He calls out to 2 pigeons cooing at his window. Like his position mannequin, he aspires to speak to animals. He praises the humility of birds, their sense for contemplation. Habib is enjoying the half, and possibly slightly extra. He’s about to put on the costume of Francis of Assisi for a play on the Nationwide Theatre. A Saint costume, then, which does increase some questions on his dedication. How can he inform his household, who’re definitely pious however moved by one other religion, that he’s going to play this hero?

Between the small elements of token Arabs that seem in his brief filmography, and this main position anchored within the Catholic faith, it’s tough for Habib to get his skilled selection authorized by his mother and father, who characterize traditions. Till the day when, randomly at a casting, he will get a barely specific half: a couple of minutes apart from Cinema itself, an embrace with Catherine Deneuve. This might maybe reconcile his household, and even his group, along with his profession.

By this singular portrait of an artist, it’s additionally the portrait of an period that Benoît Mariage paints with out seeming to, illustrating the id search of a younger man misplaced between his origins and his aspirations, tempted by the ability of a religion that may be a priori not his, and who chooses for himself an ancestral mannequin, the determine of an extremely trendy decline, the cantor of a cheerful destitution.

However this religious quest is ultimately and above all an id quest. Habib will study, all through this nice journey, to permit himself to be who he’s. By dint of wandering, of in search of references, it’s slightly little bit of himself that he’s misplaced alongside the way in which, moderately than of his father in opposition to whom he tries to construct himself. “You might be my father, however I’m now not your son,” he declares proudly to his genitor, very similar to Francis of Assisi. Habib breaks some connections to higher create some new ones, transfer past disgrace and change into a part of the world in his personal approach.

Behind this private quest, Benoît Mariage unveils in passing the behind the scenes of cinema, by providing a malicious and absurd imaginative and prescient, carried by the gently hallucinated efficiency of Bastien Ughetto as Habib, a number of pleasant supporting roles, and naturally, by the long-lasting Catherine Deneuve.

Habib, la grande aventure was produced by Daylight Movies (Belgium) and Formosa Manufacturing (France) who’ve been following the Belgian filmmaker since Scouting for Zebras [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. The movie is co-produced in Switzerland by Cab Productions, and co-produced in France by Polaris Movie. Worldwide gross sales are dealt with by Be For Movies. The French launch, slated for now for 22 February 20213, can be dealt with by KMBO.

(Translated from French)