No one ever asks, after watching a love story, whether it succeeded in raising our awareness of the lovers’ plight.
This is a demand we make almost exclusively of the “political cinema,” which makes it the only movie genre we judge on the basis of its effectiveness at raising public awareness of an issue or situation. The danger, however, with this kind of thinking, is in how close it comes to the dour, utilitarian view that art is some kind of tool designed to serve a useful purpose. Art can, of course, serve a useful purpose – and it does – but at the same time, there’s something insidious about evaluating art in this way, because it totally misses the point: that the human condition is the one essential social condition. And it is by not losing sight of this that Philippe Lioret succeeds with his film Welcome; he has given us a political story on a human scale.
Welcome is about Bilal, a seventeen-year-old Kurdish immigrant hoping to reunite with his girlfriend in Britain, but who instead ends up stranded, with countless other migrants from Afghanistan and Iraq and Somalia, homeless in Calais. These men hope to stowaway on the trucks carrying freight through the Chunnel. Risking asphyxiation, they wear plastic sacks on their heads to elude the customs agents’ carbon dioxide detectors.
After one such harrowing attempt, Bilal, played with naïve appeal by newcomer Firat Ayverdi, concludes that the only way he can make it to Britain is swimming the English Channel. Thus he meets a former swim champion named Simon, played by Vincent Lindon, whose reticent sadness is the standout performance of the film. Simon is teaching at the local pool, and, in hopes of impressing his soon to be ex-wife, a teacher and community activist played by Audry Dana, he takes the young man into his home, to the chagrin of his neighbors and the local authorities. (A draconian law called “article L622-1” empowers the French authorities to detain people caught assisting illegal immigrants.)
Much of the film feels like a study in extremes, and this is a key to its success. Through stark camerawork, Calais looms cold and imposing, with its monotone shoreline and colossal port. Against this inhospitable backdrop, Simon’s modest apartment is the sanctuary where we watch him slowly and gradually invest in Bilal hopes for a happiness that he himself has squandered. You can’t find a more natural actor than Lindon; it’s the sort of extraordinarily ordinary performance that carries a film and brings the audience along on a moral awakening. Unfortunately, as Simon comes to see, happiness, like wealth, is a luxury doled out unjustly.
I spoke with Philippe Lioret over the phone about the circumstances and political situation that gave rise to the film.
The Rumpus: It seemed to me, while watching your film, that we can change the situation in Calais just by simply acting in a humane way. But I also felt like world is absurd, that it overwhelms our small acts of kindness…
Philippe Lioret: It’s the world order that’s absurd. It’s governed by regulations and laws drawn up by lawmakers who never take into account individual circumstances or simple humanity. No one ever talks about the young Kurdish boy who wants to go to England to escape the war, we only talk in terms of “flux migratoire” [human migration].
Rumpus: un flux migratoire…
Lioret: Right. And there’s quite a difference between what we call “migration” in the official record and a 17 year old boy who’s fleeing a war zone; it removes the human element. We have [in France] ministers who continue to puppet the same line “no, no, this all doesn’t exist.” But of course it exists! And it’s shameful the way we’re treating these kids [in Calais.] It’s shameful.
Rumpus: And you witnessed this first-hand while preparing for the film…
Lioret: The things I saw. I had to be somewhat secretive, because the police were extremely suspicious; I couldn’t let them see me… but it became obvious that all the reporting we see on television is slanted, because whenever a television camera is present everything takes place so politely.
Rumpus: Really?
Lioret: But when there aren’t TV cameras, what happens isn’t polite. Out come the tear gas and the night sticks, the humiliation and incessant, incessant persecution. We do not have the right to allow this situation to continue.
Rumpus: You hear a little bit about this in the French media, but not so much…
Lioret: In France, what we’re trying to do is simply block the pipe without repairing the leak. Here’s what I mean: Ten years ago, when all these young immigrants began arriving in the north of France, they came from Kosovo. The Calaisiens today still call the illegal immigrants “Kosovars.” Except, there’s not a Kosovar among them. Do you know where all the Kosovars are today?
Rumpus: In Kosovo?
Lioret: They’ve gone back to Kosovo! Because, at last, there’s peace. It’s their country, it’s their culture, their families, their roots… they returned home, and everything’s fine! The day when there’s no longer a Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Afghans will return home, too, and the problem will be solved. You have to fix the problem at the source. To pacify Afghanistan, Darfur, this is what needs to be done. But the international community… it’s ridiculous. As long as we fail to pacify these war zones, there will be illegal immigration fleeing humanitarian disaster, people risking their lives. And here [in France], we don’t know what to do with them all. The least we can do is try to welcome this flood of people in a humane fashion. What France is doing now is simply undignified. Of course people can argue, “but we cannot compensate for all the miseries of world.” Okay, fine. We live in an extremely rich country compared to the extreme poverty of these places. At the very least, we could put these immigrants up in a hangar with beds for the winter, not leave them to live in the mud like animals. Even dogs in France are better treated.
Rumpus: You found the story for your film in this milieu. In a way, the film was made in reverse, because you didn’t go looking for a location. It was the location that spawned the story…
Lioret: Yes, indeed. I built the story around the facts. Even this kid who wanted to find his girlfriend in England, I actually met him. I met a seventeen year old boy, who later left for England to join his girlfriend. He was the inspiration for Bilal. And then, the humanitarian volunteers who worked there told me that there had been countless attempts by immigrants to swim across the channel.
Rumpus: What happens to most of them?
Lioret: Most of them are returned to the French coast by the currents. They are usually found extremely weak, but alive. But the volunteers also told me a story about a young man who had left one day to make an attempt, and no one had heard any news. He never telephoned to say that he made it, so they feared the worst. I drew on all of this to tell my story. I didn’t relate anything in the film that doesn’t exist. And that’s the worst part: I wish it was fiction, but it’s all true. It’s been happening for a long time, young people forced to swim across the sea or finish their journey by jumping off a boat, as happens every day in the Adriatic, every day at Gibraltar.
