This week’s cinema releases with Thierry Fiorile and Matteu Maestracci: “The Seeds of the Wild Fig Tree” by Mohammad Rasoulof and “My Life, My Face” by Sophie Fillières.
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Reading time: 8 min
Seeds of the wild fig tree by Mohammad Rasoulof, it is the most powerful tribute to Iranian women, who since 2022 have been defying Islamist power, the movement “Woman, Life, Freedom”born spontaneously after the death of Jina Mahsa Aminikilled by the police because she was not wearing her veil correctly. When this revolt began, Mohammad Rasoulof was in prison. Upon his release, despite the close surveillance he was subjected to, he filmed – clandestinely – a family film, a metaphor for Iranian society.
The father is a judge. All day long, he mercilessly condemns opponents of the regime, the mother rejoices in her husband’s social advancement, but the daughters (two teenagers) follow, horrified, what is happening in the street, via social networks. A generational conflict that the director imagines as a rendezvous with the history of the Iranian people. The film grabs you by the guts, like a thriller, between real images of the repression, seen on the networks, and feats of staging, almost fantastic.
Arriving at Cannes at the last minute, Mohammad Rasoulof only received a special prize; the jury only praised the political scope of his film, overlooking the immense quality of this work, carried by three formidable actresses who also fled Iran.
And here too, a story within the story concerning the making of the feature film, in its last part, since the filmmaker Sophie Fillières died in July 2023, just a few days after finishing filming, and before leaving, she asked her children, Agathe and Adam Bonitzer, to take care of the editing, in the company of François Quiqueré, a professional editor.
A story that is both magnificent and sad, which explains the great emotion at the Cannes Film Festival, when My life, my face was screened at the opening of the Quinzaine des Cinéastes. And what does this film tell? Well, it’s 100% Sophie Fillières, it’s unclassifiable and indefinable, not easy to tell or summarize. We meet Barberie Bichette (Agnès Jaoui), a frustrated author who works half-heartedly in advertising, is very clumsy with her children, goes through a severe depression, and is diagnosed – to make matters worse – with a serious illness. It’s Fiilières, and it’s also a slice of life for the director herself.
With these lost characters, who seem to be constantly bumping into each other, with their crazy nicknames, brilliant and lunar dialogues, and above all an excellent Agnès Jaoui in a rather unobvious comic rhythm, we laugh as much as we cry, and we like it, a lot.