This film was played in Greece within the context of the 13nth French-speaking Film Festival. It is a strange blend of genres, drama, documentary and certainly a film with an agenda. This last observation is the one that must be emphasized the most. What was "The Triumph of the Will" for Nazism is this film for Leftism. It loosely follows the itinerary of a girl of African origins which has reached Europe. She encounters the hostility of policemen and bureaucrats and through her adventures we watch events and mass rallies in Athens, Paris and Madrid. She is the sole person in the movie who can be described as the protagonist. All others appear briefly or participate in mass scenes in which they are indistinguishable from the crowd. The movie is interspersed with dicta and slogans against capitalism from the book of a French writer who is believed to have inspired this film. They are not particularly ingenious or bright but they stress the fact of exploitation. A poor girl is used as a paradigm and her personal story is used as a parable of the story of the wretched of the Earth-that is Thirld World immigrants as well as Roma people, who are the people the director belongs to. Inevitably your opinion of this particular movie will be very much conditioned by how much you agree or disagree with its politics. I think that it makes a powerful message for the cause it espouses although it is rather loosely structured.Surely it will mean different things to different people.
