eric.rambeau

Films that crisscross different stories are no novelty (Short Cuts, Magnolia, Iossellani's "Favoris de la lune"...) but few of them have dared go as far as "Le battement d'ailes...". It would take a good deal of thinking and remembering to tell just HOW MANY stories are embedded in this wonder. And it would be pointless because, precisely, the object of the film is to show that it is not possible to separate one individual story from another.

One day in the life of so many people, characters that can be in turn charming, infuriating, lovable... And, on top of that, you get the feeling the director really loves them all (or, at any rate, most of them because some are frankly off-putting. That's life, here, just for you, on the screen.

At a time when everybody thought the Thatcher-Major tandem had won the economic war, a bunch of miners decided to use their redundancy benefits to buy the mine that had fired them! A few years later a French crew crosses the Channel to check out how they are doing. The film-maker ostensibly refuses to take sides: there is no voice over, no sense of direction. And that's what is great with the film! Of course it is biased, and of course those devils of miners are presented as good guys. But so what! They ARE good guys and, for at least a few years, they have won and proved that they could be profitable (and keep the profit for themselves rather than turn it to a bunch of white collar workers who never sweat it out at the bottom of the pit!

If you never understood anything to the war in Lebanon, this might not be the best film to help you along... But, if you're interested to the havoc that wars (whether civil or not) can cause, this is a film for you. Funny, bitter and touching (I could add a dozen other adjectives...) "Civilisées" is the tale of a few people (especially servants who have been left behind when the bosses fled to safer places), isolated and lost in a senseless conflict where having a good time can mean taping dynamite to a stray cat... the problem being that stray cats can be very affectionate and WILL try to cling to you even after you've lit the fuse...