La chute des hommes

Ankward but honest and that's for me the most important. A movie speaking of French Djihad is not so usual, especially when showing a young woman, but her character may be naive and annoying for the audiences. However her character is touching. When you begin to watch it, the announced length may discourage you with such a clumsy directing, but after a while you can make it because it is never really boring, precisely because of the obvious naive and from time to time unbearable female character's performance. Very strange feeling actually. Very rare. I never wished to switch off the TV, and I would have done it for far better made features.

In "la chute des hommes" ,Miss Carron uses again the technique she used in her "ne nous soumets pas à la tentation " ;although these two works do not belong to the same genre , by a long shot , they have the same multiple POV construction, a trick as old as the hills, which was used in France before "Rashomon " and at the same time as "Citizen kane" (Albert Valentin in the Occupation days notably )

Thus the movie is divided into three parts : the hostage, the taxi driver and the Islamist kidnappers .

Although I do think Miss Carron is perhaps the most interesting director in contemporary France , "la chute des hommes" is ,by several respects, unconvincing and full of implausibilities .

So much for the heroine,whose mother escaped from Ukraine and is a Christian and whose father (who was also her dad in her autobiographical " la fille publique" )is an atheist. She works in perfumes .

In spite of her descent into hell ,it's almost impossible to feel for this unfortunate victim, whose naivete knows no bounds : the taxi driver whose hesitations would seem suspect to any sensible person should have urged her to find another one ;then ,although the hotel is supposed to be in the town center , she 's not surprised when her driver drastically wanders outside the city limits .And her blah blah blah gets on your nerve in the long run .

Language is also one of the biggest flaws of the movie :for Abou ,who would live in France before turning jihadist,it's all right .But that all the Islamist kidnappers are fluent in French ,it takes the biscuit! When they are between them, it's acceptable ,but with the heroine ...Abou could play the role of the interpreter ,and the subtitles ,they are there to be used!

There's the obligatory escape attempt , brainwashing concerning Allah 's paradise , and one of Miss Carron's permanent features :the miracle (see also " le fils d'un roi" ,"le soleil reviendra" ) which ends the movie. Religion has always been one of her main concerns, but mentioning Saint-John ("the wind blows wherever it wishes") does not make the movie a spiritual work.