Cédric Ido explores “Gravity” by plunging a city into an SF atmosphere

Gravitysecond feature film by Cédric Ido that he signs alone (The good life was co-directed with Modi Barry), opens with a fall: two children fall, two others watch – powerless – at the accident. A founding drama in the psychology of the main protagonists of his latest film: Daniel (Max Gomis), Christophe (Jean-Baptiste Anoumoun) and Joshua (Steve Tientcheu). Two decades later, they find themselves in the city, on the eve of a rare event, an alignment of the planets.

Daniel is a high level athlete who is about to emigrate to Canada, with his daughter and his partner Sabrina (Hafsia Herzi). Joshua, her older brother who has been in a wheelchair since the tragedy, needs her help. Especially for his deliveries because Joshua is a part-time dealer. Otherwise, the budding inventor locks himself in his studio to tamper with his chair. As for Christophe, he has just been released from prison and has a grudge against the young people of the city, self-proclaimed “Les Ronins”, “masterless samurai” who now control all the traffic that takes place in the city, a territory of which every square meter is under surveillance. Especially since Joshua and his brother operate, according to them, on their land.

Guilty

Cédric Ido films a gang war, with very unequal forces, against a background of intergenerational conflict, using the codes of science fiction. The youngest criticize their elders for having done nothing to improve living conditions in the city and, above all, those of their younger brothers whose horizons remain limited, even today, to trafficking of all kinds. The battlefield is a landscape dominated by menacing towers that defy gravity in almost every shot, which “phenomenon by which a body undergoes the attraction of the Earth” (Robert). As Daniel, the narrator of Gravitythis force governs all terrestrial movements: the runner knows something about it, especially when he has the impression of being “stuck to the ground”.

To describe this latent fight, the director draws a parallel between the daily life of his characters and the astronomical event that is taking place above their heads, the opportunity to discover sublime images of a glowing sky. It goes without saying that the photo of Gravity is sublime. Ido, who is also the scriptwriter of his film, used everything we know about housing estates, or at least thinks we know, to feed his plot, and make them real scriptwriting springs. Nothing is left to chance, each information to which the audience could be sensitive a posteriori, a reason for being. Like the breadcrumbs swarmed by Tom Thumb to help him find his way, with the difference that the fictional ones do not disappear.

All codes are allowed

Always at the service of the story, Cédric Ido resorts to visual tricks such as the magnificent drawings of the character of Christophe which can also be found in an ingenious device where he watches, behind glass, the new little masters of the district. Christophe’s vision confers paranormal attributes on the Ronins, otherwise filmed as zombies, forming a pack ready to pounce on its prey. Their methods, which evoke those of the most violent gangs, are chilling. Gravity thus maintains a gloomy atmosphere created by the multiplication of shooting angles that surf on the theme of the film and question the verticality of the human being.

The distribution is another asset of Cédric Ido’s SF proposal. The supporting roles, such as those of the leaders of the Ronins or that of Jovic – embodied by an Olivier Rosemberg – whom Christophe accuses of belonging to the RG (General Intelligence) as he knows everything about everything, help to establish the story carried by the trio at the heart of the plot.

City towers and space seem to go hand in hand these days in the cinema. In 2020, Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh proposed Gagarin, from the name of the immense red brick city of Ivry-sur-Seine condemned to destruction, of which the hero Youri dreamed of weightlessness. With Gravity, in a darker register, Cédric Ido explores in a singular and inspired way the heaviness of an architectural framework, which unfortunately rhymes in certain districts with blocked horizons.

The sheet

Gender : science fiction
Director: Cedric Ido
Actors: Max Gomis, Jean-Baptiste Anoumoun, Steve Tientcheu, Olivier Rosemberg and Hafsia Herzi
Country : France
Duration : 1h26
Exit : May 3, 2023
Distributer : Alba Films, Treasure Cinema
Summary: A mysterious alignment of the planets sets the sky ablaze and worries all the inhabitants of the city. A band of teenagers, Les Ronins, reign supreme over this city, and see this planetary event as the possibility of a new era. Daniel, Joshua and Christophe, 3 childhood friends separated by the deal and prison, will have to unite to face this gang. After that night, when the sky turned blood red, nothing will ever be the same…