60th Locarno Film Festival
Film: Sous Les Toits De Paris
Director: Hiner Saleem
Country: France
Running Time 98 mins
Cast: Michel Piccoli, Mylène Demongeot, Maurice Bénichou, Marie Kremer, Birol Ünel.
Sous Les Toits de Paris or Beneath The Rooftops of Paris is a great example of French filmmaking at its very best, whose understated and minimalist tone delivers a fragile, tragic, yet deeply moving piece about humanity, and that solitude; an overriding sense of loneliness, can touch us all, young or old.
Set in the murky working class suburbs of Paris during one, long hot summer, acclaimed French actor and Locarno Excellence award winner Michel Piccoli is Marcel an octogenarian who lives in a tiny room on the 6th floor of a run-down apartment block where the constant plip plop of water annoyingly resounds through the hallway and there is only one shared W.C. Once a week Marcel and his best friend Amar visit the local municipal swimming pool where they take a shower and watch the world go by – swim they never do. In fact Marcel’s sole pleasure in life, we observe, is found in a quiet, restrained woman called Thérèse who serves them food in the bistro where she works.
Thérèse is a kindly, compassionate woman who says very little but has clearly been enamoured with Marcel for some time, communicating her love for him through her deeply soulful eyes and penetrating stare. Their encounters though occasional and discreet, are more than fleeting; he romances, wines and dines her; she caresses, soothes and tends to his wearied, flailing body. For a brief moment in their mundane, daily lives of all too real poverty where a human kindness often goes unfelt or unexpected, Marcel and Thérèse share an unusual tenderness that doesn’t require words.
Then there’s the young girl on the same floor whom he befriends and takes in under his wing after her boyfriend has overdosed. She is homeless and seemingly without a friend in the world, but in their shared loneliness this 80 year old man and twenty something girl forge a deep understanding and mutual respect: she accompanies him to the pool, even helps him to shower – he offers her a roof over her head, a humble meal, quiet companionship.
Sous Les Toits is kind of a neat essay on our times; it’s a poetic portrait of human nature and modern day society, particularly the disaffected lives of those struggling to survive in big Capital cities such as Paris where affluence rubs up against abject poverty. It’s an engrossing, affecting film that makes you want to rally against Marcel’s absent and disinterested only son for deserting an old man whose worsening heart condition and rapidly deteriorating health pulls at the heart strings more than anything else.
How many paths do we cross in a day? How many folk do we casually exchange glances with, then forget the next minute? The characters in Saleem’s film, alike in their almost interminable silence, are forced to confront themselves; their own fears and sadnesses - and in doing so re-awaken a part of themselves from a life long past. Ultimately, if there’s a message it’s: we may live and die alone but in those rare, transient moments of serenity we can learn to fly.
Read the rest of our coverage from the 60th Annual Locarno Film Festival here.
