Directed by Yvan Attal, the film Le Brio is a comedy-drama scheduled for release on November 22, 2017. By making a film on racism set at the University of Paris II Assas (which is trying somehow to get rid of its image as a cocoon of the fachosphere), Yvan Attal risked falling into a cliché hard to swallow. Yet the director comes out brilliantly!
The story of an encounter
Le Brio is above all the story of a meeting between two seemingly opposing people: Neïla Salah and Pierre Mazard. She is a young girl living in Créteil, a first-year law student at Paris Assas University. He is a professor at the same university, controversial because of his inappropriate reflections and sense of provocation. Late during the first class of the year, Neïla Salah will pay the price of Pierre Mazard's indomitable temperament. The latter is thus accused of racism by the other students and the administration. To clear his honor and avoid his dismissal, Pierre Mazard will prepare Neïla Salah for the famous eloquence contest.
Their conflictual relationship is extremely touching and is the great strength of the film. Between humor and drama, the duo manages without great difficulty to draw tears to their audience. Camélia Jordana and Daniel Auteuil excel in the interpretation of these two colorful characters, which they play with accuracy and passion. Just as endearing, the other protagonists do not fail to mark the spirits.
Colorful characters
Neïla Salah's mother and grandmother appear only briefly on screen, but their short appearance leaves the sweet memory of the tenderness they exude. Although stereotyped, the characters are all particularly endearing and even the most innocuous are highlighted by the scenario. The natural charm of the actors easily transports us into their universe, even when their worlds are opposite. The spectator plays, laughs, revolts and gets angry with them. The film is shot so intimately that the audience becomes almost part of the story, silent witness of what is playing out before their eyes. At times, the camera frame discreetly suggests that we see the characters from another angle in order to better convey their different emotions. Because that's the key to the film: emotion. That of the protagonists certainly, but also the one that the film tries to transmit and communicates successfully.
The Brio, a risky bet
To deal with sensitive topics, it is essential to know how to put the emotions they arouse aside. That it is difficult to approach the subject of racism in cinema without sinking into cliché or meandering (triggering in the public the opposite effect than that intended). From the first images of the film, the viewer is faced with an unbearable cliché: the young suburban woman is the only one to be checked at the entrance of her school. And that's the beauty of the film. Yvan Attal later maliciously returns to this precise moment of the film to show the viewer how wrong and clichéd this plan was. The whole Brio is woven with little winks as cynical as Pierre Mazard's character. He plays with these plans as Neïla Salah learns to play words. An enlightened tightrope walker who leaps impudently above the void, Le Brio was very frankly in danger of making a misstep, but instead offers us a majestic ballet.
As Pierre Mazard puts it so well:
The important thing is not to tell the truth, but to be right.
Thus Le Brio is the very proof that you can laugh at anything with anyone, as long as you laugh at it with intelligence.
A true initiatory quest, Le Brio lives up to its name. Funny, brilliant, lively and fair, the film manages to go beyond the clichés that we can fear at the beginning of the film to offer a beautiful story of humanity.
