They're rude to us, but we only come here to work

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2022

#42 : Nous (We)

French-Senegalese film-maker Alice Diop offers a sensitive portrayal of the disparate communities that live along one of Paris’s commuter rail lines, in a documentary predating her acclaimed fiction feature debut, Saint Omer.

And, we're back in French again!  I've never heard of this - I'm expecting something incredibly worthy and, in all probability, somewhat grim.

Hmmm - I'm not really sure what we've got here.  It's basically a series of slices of life which we're told are linked by the commuter line but, to be honest, they could be linked by anything, or nothing.  We have some people looking at a stag, a man from Mali who fixes cars, some people who go to church, Alice's sister doing her rounds as a nurse and a load of other randoms.  It's also interspersed with some of Alice's old home videos.  In some ways it's nice that it doesn't concentrate on grimness, but it all feels a bit disconnected.  The vignettes are definitely sensitively shot, but sometimes so sensitively that you struggle to tell exactly who it's about or the point it's trying to make - or if it's trying to make a point at all.  And, well - I think that's pretty much all I have to say on the "plot".

As well as being sensitively shot, it's also beautifully shot.  There are lots of nicely framed urban shots and also some beautiful countryside shots - Alice has a good eye for such things.  And the scenes featuring interviews are also well done - you get a good natural feeling about everyone.  I would however say she's overly fond of a static shot with unrelated dialogue playing over it, but I guess that's just what she likes.  

But - well, how do I put this?  What's the bloody point to it all!?  The only bit that really engaged me was with Alice's sister where we at least had some human interaction - and it's interesting that it's mostly old white people being treated by the younger black nurse, but the conversations are lovely.  Apart from that I just felt a bit lost in this film - if it wasn't subtitled, I would have given up watching it about 20 minutes in but even so I didn't exactly give it 100% of my attention.  I assume the thinking behind it is that "we" (as in France or Paris) is made up of a whole load of "we" (as in people), but that's hardly world-shattering thinking now, is it?

So it's a "No!" from me, but I'm actually really struggling to think who would like this film -  maybe if you had a detailed knowledge of the railway line in question and recognised all the neighbourhoods then it would make a bit more sense (but I have to say I'm not convinced).  Otherwise I feel you'd have to be a dedicated student of human nature who was prepared to watch this multiple times to gain the full effect.

At the time of writing, the film is available to watch on MUBI but nobody has that so you'll need to rent it on Apple, Amazon and YouTube (it would never even occur to me to rent anything on YouTube).  But I'm really unclear why you'd want to do that...

#43 - A lovely quirky film
#41 - A really enjoyable and thoughtful film