The suburb in technicolor
The world is yours
Film. Romain Gavras reinvents the mythology of the French suburbs in The world is yours with Vincent Cassel and Isabelle Adjani unrecognizable. We met his main actor, Karim Leklou who tells us about it.
By Jacques Braunstein
Neighborhood life, gangs of young people, police violence and riots, difficult trip to Paris and blemish return … De Ma 6-T va crack-er to Kaïra through La Squale or Les Lascars … We find these elements more or less developed and differently arranged in most movies on the suburbs since La Haine (1995). They repeat the unfolding and strong images of Matthieu Kassovitz’s movie.
”Roman Gavras manages to reset the counters of the representation of the suburbs
The originality of Romain Gavras’ The world is yours is that he manages to reset the counters of the representation of the suburbs. A quarter of a century later, consciously or not, the filmmaker got rid of these clichés he knows by heart since he played with in clips like “Stress” of Justice, “Born Free” of M.I.A. or “No Church In The Wild” by Jay-Z & Kanye West.
In his new film, the director inventing other images, tells another story. A thriller between “Go Fast” and scam, between a city of Boulogne Billancourt-which comes from the rapper Booba we seem-and Benidorm Spain. Two graphic and colorful universes, where La Haine chose black and white. Shorts footballs, dyed hair, basement lit like nightclubs, pools and sports cars more or less well tuned (he had already magnified in the videos of “Signatune” for Dj Medhi or “Bad Girls” for Mia) … The filmmaker unfolds a flashy and colorful palette that he masters and magnifies.
At the Cannes Film Festival Libération spoke of a movie that “diverts and renews at the same time” all the clichés of the time. Which would be true if Gavras’s gaze was overhanging, that he hated in principle that vulgarity he shows (as seems the journalist Liberation). But Gavras loves what he films, he finds a form of beauty and manages to communicate it to us.
We met the main actor of The world is yours during the Cannes Film Festival. Karim Leklou (Réparer les vivants, Joueurs…) played Francis, a child of the cities, who came in his thirties would like to rank. Small dealer who wants to get out and have a job like everyone else : sell Mister Freeze in the Maghreb (sic). He talks to us about his partners. Vincent Cassel (already present Notre jour viendra, previous film of Gavras) which plays precisely a sort of Vince of La Haine, that years of prison would have made a little crazy and which is passionate for the Illuminati.
And Isabelle Adjani, incredible as an unworthy mother who disguises herself as an Arab princess to steal from department stores at the head of a veiled Sheherazade gang. It is clear here that the icon has fun playing with its origins while the French cinema gave him so little opportunity (except perhaps in La journée de la jupe, 2008).
The world is yours is an enjoyable film full of spiteful spirit that evokes Tarantino, and the Coen brothers. Or Scarface whose favorite phrase of the hero gives his name to the film. But a Scarface viewed and fantasized from a worn VHS. The version of Brian de Palma’s movie projected on the screen too big of a too small apartment of a city of Boulogne. A success.
