A French film that did not get US distribution but which I had a handy screener to watch as a tribute to deceased veteran actor Claude Brasseur (Dec.2020) turns out to be one of the more interesting treatments I've seen of the troubled relations between France and its former African colony of Algeria.
The theme is centered on the developing friendship between an Oran olive oil entrepreneur (Brasseur) whose French family was rooted in Algeria and a young Paris surgeon of Algerian extraction who is alienated from his Arab heritage. Georges the businessman has made a rare trip to Paris for cataract surgery and the operation symbolizes, perhaps a bit obviously, the opening of his eyes to what has been going on, with his own family whose surviving members unlike him decided not to stay in Algeria ,and with his business threatened by thuggish Algerian bureaucrats, Mafia style gangsters,and the context of the mid 199Os civil conflict there with Islamic fanatics.
Director Cabrera is herself a "pied noir, " a French woman born in Algeria whose family left in the decisive year of 1962. She has worked mostly in documentary and brings a bit of that experience to her treatment, aided by the cinematography of the talented Helene Louvant.
Her film to its credit does not try to resolve the frictions and tensions which develop and the threat of violence to Georges (illustrated by the showing on a bar Tv of the real life assassination of Algerian singer Cheb Hasni) is left hanging.But the film culminates with some satisfaction in a lively singing and dancing scene, of the "rai" type music associated with Hasni among the group of expatriate Algerians.
