Athena is a bleak, almost dystopian look at the near future of France, a country familiar with racial tensions. We follow three brothers: Karim, a revolutionary leader of the community in revolt, Athena (Salimane), Abdel, a respected military man (Dessalah), and Moktar, a drug dealer (Embarek), as they reel from the death of their brother Idir, at the hands of police.
The death, supposedly the third in one month, leads to an uprising reminiscent of the 1871 Paris Commune, where the city essentially seceded from France for a year. Athena follows the chaos and starts with possibly the best intro of 2022: a blistering, intense one take that introduces the movie with an incredible bang. It's so good I've watched the intro itself three times.
But Athena doesn't let up from there; this isn't a movie that bogs itself down in drama and conversation. It's high octane, kinetic, and a feast for the senses. This is a gorgeous movie; the cinematography so perfectly captures the chaos and finds beauty in it. There are literal shots from this movie that I could see being album covers. The music is epic; orchestral mixed with booming synth that gives this very contemporary story a timelessness. It's as if we're watching an ancient siege take place in the 21st century. I can't gush enough about the amazing music, especially that sinister main theme.
The performances are also excellent; Salimane and Dessalah in particular convey a lot with their facial expressions; I fully understood the dynamics of their complicated relationship even though they shared the screen together quite briefly.
When I first watched Athena, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of substance to the story; while we get clues as to why the anger that is displayed in the film - the anger of immigrant communities vis a vis their interactions with the police in suburban Paris - the world we're entering isn't *fully* disclosed to us.
There are also some plot developments that I don't think make a ton of sense, and the movie begins to falter a bit for me by Act III. There's a plot development and we're sort of rushed into a the third act; the people I watched this movie with were shocked the movie was ending so quickly. It felt like we could've and should've gotten more.
But, the fact that I could watch this movie with others and know they'd be entertained is kind of a miracle. The French tend to make films about their society collapsing along racial and religious lines quite a bit. It's something I would never really expect to see from American filmmakers, and it's incredible to see it so often from France (I'm thinking of movies like Frontieres, Les Miserables etc.).
If you want to introduce audiences to French cinema, you really can't get better than Athena. It's an incredible, accessible, and very rewatchable movie. I highly recommend it, because I guarantee you're probably not going to see anything like it.
