The second feature film by Rachid Hami is devoted to Jallal, died in 2012 at 24 years old during a rite of integration from the school of Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan.
By Mathieu Macheret
“Death for France” generally, on an honorary basis, on behalf of the soldiers killed in combat. But what about when this death occurs in the ranks of the army, between its walls, revealing within it dysfunctions and dissensions? This is the question, among many others, posed by the second feature film by Rachid Hami, inspired by the real case of his brother Jallal Hami, died in 2012, to whom the film is dedicated.
The story he draws from it within the illustrious military school of Saint-Cyr. Awakened in the middle of the night, the new recruits are subject to the integration rite, published “Bahutage”, a parody of Operation Commando, modestly where they are pushed to cross a pond. Aïssa (Shaïn Boumedine, discovered in Mektoub, My Love. Canto Uno in 2017), a 24 -year -old officer, congestioned by the cold, will not get up. His family, of Algerian origin, who awaits funeral worthy of the name, comes up against the closure of the institution, which is not called for nothing “great mute”, not quick to recognize his wrongs – three soldiers were sentenced to manslaughter in 2020.
a form of stiffness
For France features this confrontation, without transferring to the charge, but by describing a complex field of forces and tensions, linked to the history of immigration as to the injury of floating identities. Rachid Hami does not hesitate to summon the past by successive flashbacks, between Algeria in the dark decade and a new year spent in Taiwan in the company of the big brother, Ismaël (Karim Leklou). These temporal and geographic dropouts give flesh to the story, and consist in warding off inaugural death by completing a posteriori family portrait. For France thus opens the door of the romantic to characters too often reduced to a social imagination.
The whole is not without weaknesses. A limit is signaled in the excessive retained of the staging which, for the sake of transparency, refusing to yield to anger as to disarray, fade all along a form of stiffness, and stagnates in the vague register of “drama”.
No doubt this is a way, too, not to be crushed by such a subject -the death of a brother -to keep a cool head. It is at this price that the film finds a form of measurement and finesse. Laconic on certain points, while deviations and feedback on himself, he also knows how to say too much, so as not to completely elucidate this impossible mourning. Then, the spectator finds his place there, and can thus share it.