Jacques Baratier 1971-1980 Drama France Politics

Jacques Baratier – La ville-bidon (1971)

adminMarch 19, 2022

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La Ville bidon describes precisely the historical path, in the parisian suburbs of the seventies, from slum cities (“bidonvilles”) to silly/fake cities (“villes bidon”). The film switch es constantly from a very documentary approach to a fictional delirium in a critical way that is tending to show how crazy the documentary parts are themselves, this is to say the reality itself ! For example, those realistic moments invite us through the process of decision taking : we see the different point of view of the architect, the politic leader, the real estate developer, the sociologist, each of them is quite mad and typical of a particular time. But they also invite us in the slum cities and in the “transitory buildings” where several communities were difficultly living together (the children characters of this film could be the parents of those who are even more desperate and loose and rejected today in all the french big cities suburbs). This fictional craziness of the film is given by a quasi psychedelic portrait of the young scrap dealers that are working and living in the slum city. They are making money with collecting and destroying cars to deal several materials. They are practicing crazy rodeo with their cars in the big territories that looks as their empire for several days more. This “last days” atmosphere is constantly present in the film as well as in a Pedro Costa film, in those two artistic worlds, the threat to the future “ville nouvelle” plays a big role. But in this Baratier film, most of the characters are played by actors and they are playing really well ! The performances of Bernadette Lafont and Roland Dubillard are amazing and the scene with Robert Castel as funny as dramatic. In a way, a very critical way, the entire film seems to be as funny as it is dark.