Jacques Audiard (a prophet, Of Rust and Bone, Dheepan) knows what he owes to filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, and even more to François Truffaut when he signs a film like The Olympiads. When one of her female characters collapses (from love) in a public place, Fanny Ardant comes to mind in The woman next doorfainting in the middle of an underground parking lot while reconnecting with the one she thought she had lost forever.
There are few “stolen kisses” and “marital homes” in this love chronicle in the digital age, the title of which refers to a working-class, high-rise district of the French capital. Like Éric Rohmer’s antiheroes in my friend’s friend Strolling through the architectural coldness of Cergy-Pontoise, those from Audiard also talk about their feelings, never far from their telephone, because it is often their only tool for meeting others. Idylls are born, only to disappear just as quickly, while other games of seduction stretch out in the virtual world before being embodied in reality. Just like in the era of rotary telephones that we didn’t want to “hang up”, some chilled lovers prefer to sleep with the bluish light of their computer to better see and feel the other’s presence.
This 2.0 flirt also appears as an escape for these 30-year-old graduates, with shattered ideals, never where they thought they were destined, in love or at work. Émilie (Lucy Zhang, insolently beautiful), fresh out of political science, must resort to telemarketing; Camille (Makita Samba as an indolent seducer), passionate about teaching, finds herself a real estate agent; Nora (Noémie Merlant, moving), who dreamed of being done with real estate, returns to it after a brief and painful return to law school, victim of cyberbullying. The latter, mistaken for a (virtual) sex worker, Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth), is going through a real nightmare, which will somehow lead to her meeting Camille, both roommate and lover of Émilie, at least a certain weather.
This disillusioned marivaudage, leaving little room for the imagination since sexuality is described in a frontal and expeditious manner, paints a gloomy portrait of an era, and especially of a generation whose all horizons seem obstructed. By the multitude of HLM towers that surround them? These champions of precariousness adapt to it, just like their various ethnic origins or the color of their skin, offering the face of a mixed Paris, but not carrying its diversity like a flag. Audiard, with the complicity of two screenwriters who are also filmmakers, Léa Mysius (Ava) and Celine Sciamma (Portrait of the girl on fire), weaves a story where destinies intertwine with astonishing fluidity, where ruptures are often caused by a host of misunderstandings.
A veritable Parisian Chinatown, the 13and arrondissement appears here stripped of its finery, and above all of its bright colors, transformed by a sumptuous black and white by Paul Guilhaume. This aesthetic bias thus focuses our gaze on the bodies and hearts of these bewildered beings who find solace in sex and psychological crutches in their electronic gadgets. Whether they wander in the middle of concrete squares or in soulless apartments, this out of tune quartet will slowly converge towards a certain form of serenity, Audiard the cynic and the disciple of film noir also being able to soften. He does it brilliantly here, giving a remarkable score to these mostly unknown young actors wrapped in Rone’s superb soundscapes.
At the heart of this world inspired by the work of American cartoonist Adrian Tomine, where everyone has fun when no one is with others, The Olympiads reveals its disturbing and cruel loneliness, without giving in to pessimism. Once again, Audiard deserves an accolade, even a medal.