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| From https://cdn.cinematerial.com/p/297x/gorqtsym/ occidental-french-movie-poster-md.jpg |
Director: Neïl Beloufa
Screenplay: Neïl Beloufa
Cast: Anna Ivacheff as Diana; Idir
Chender as Antonio; Paul Hamy as Giorgio; Louise Orry-Diquéro as Romy; Hamza
Meziani as Khaled; Brahim Tekfa as Karim; Françoise Cousin as Sophie; Pierre
Rousselet as Christophe; Brune Renault as Vanessa; Geoffrey Carey as M.
Dubreuil
Synopsis: At the Hotel Occidental, in the midst of a riot in the
streets, two men claiming to be Italian (Paul
Hamy and Idir Chender) book a
room only to be held with suspicion by the hotel manager Diana (Anna Ivacheff). A series of turns,
questions of perceptions and secrets are found.
Under eighty minutes, Neïl Beloufa's Occidental is nonetheless a dense production, whose entire form is
a constant shifting form where everything changes. Fittingly it's set in the
midst of a night time riot, France's history from the French Revolution to the
2018-19 yellow vests movement with constant conflict, aptly used as the
exterior to a film where perceptions are constantly being broken and remade.
Two men who enter a hotel are viewed as immediately suspicious; they may be
gay, though Giorgio (Paul Hamy) has
already wooed the female desk clerk Romy (Louise
Orry-Diquéro), whilst there are secrets about why his partner Antonio (Idir Chender) has already made hotel
manager Diane (Anna Ivacheff) even
more nervous around him than to the pair of them together. Perceptions of racism
and culpability play out as, barring the exterior shots, it is entirely within
the neon drenched hotel building.
From there, there are a few main
characters, including male desk clerk Khaled (Hamza Meziani), prone to fainting in tense situations, alongside a
group of drunken British men on a stag party and an older man with a younger
woman. Throw in the police briefly, and it's a conference of divided opinions
and sides crossing all around little details. Where a pink handbag is, why
someone is drinking a two cokes when they have a full bottle in their room,
absurd to write on paper but in context played with humour and a game of little
tensions. On a second viewing (seen twice for the review), it does work as a
series of characters in mind games with each other.
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| From https://frieze.com/sites/default/files/landscapeoccidental.jpg |
It helps the acting is good, the script with each character clearly defined. Romy 's immediately on the two guests' side, lovingly preparing cheese between slices of cooked bread when food is refused to them, Giorgio in his yellow coat wooing her at the beginning only to be left beaten up by Diane in the midst of the tensions and her undercover investigations among the rooms. Even the language itself is played with, thankfully picked up in the subtitles I had but probably even better if the viewer was bilingual in the languages involved, between bad incomprehensible Italian and when it's perfectly spoken in an emotional scene. The only one constant, where even the old man and the woman (his daughter? A lover?) vary, are the drunk, boorish British guests, which as a British viewer I can accept as a good swipe at a poor side of ourselves. The rest of the cast in comparison move and change until it leads to the literal burning of their environment, only the slightly jarring CGI explosion involved a flaw in the film's production.
Against the dialogue-heavy drama
is a distinct aesthetic from Beloufa
with the help of cinematographer Guillaume
le Grontec and the composers of the score Grégoire Bourdeil and Alexandre
Geindre. At the end of the 2010s, the eighties throwback aesthetic has
finally become tiresome for me, but only because of when it's been used as a
cheap aesthetic, where here in Occidental
instead I am reminded why these tropes of neon colours and synthesizer
scores are still vibrant and still worth using, it's brightly coloured (but
subtle) look even including how the costumes like Romy's canary yellow jumper add
to the characters' personalities. The score is pulsating without being
over-the-top, whilst the distinct typeface of the credits, whilst a slight
detail, adds to its distinct personality too. The result ultimately succeeds to
adding oomph to the material which is also with depth; when it finishes, the
rioting crowd in a series of Chinese whispers over elaborating the incidents
inside the hotel, the theme of misdirection Occidental plays with becomes precise, witty and ultimately clever.
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| From https://cine-vue.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/ 09/948ed-_0001_occidental_01.jpg |
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