An unprecedented wave of musical films is sweeping across our screens, several dealing with the theme of the class struggle, others that of women conductors. Few do it with as much sensitivity and accuracy as Entertainment. Perhaps because the story is inspired by real events.
Before Entertainmentthere was Tenor by Claude Zidi Jr., a polished joke where a rapper, organizer of clandestine street fights and sushi delivery man became Pavarotti in a few months without discipline, technique or musical culture, just by blowing bubbles with a straw in cocktail glasses, encouraged by a cancerous Paris Opera singing teacher.
Before Tenorthere was At fingertips, a film by Ludovic Bernard, released here in 2019, in which the director of the Paris Conservatory took a prison prisoner under his wing. It was hardly less appalling.
Whether Entertainment of Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar evolves in another galaxy, it is not for particular cinematographic qualities, but because, just like in Heaven will wait (2016) or The heirs (2015), the director makes the protagonists of flesh and truth exist and transmits with emotion to the viewer the feeling that all this is from experience. It’s not complicated, you will tell us, since Zahia Ziouani, who we see here at 17, embodied with faith by Oulaya Amamra, has indeed created an orchestra, called Divertimento.
Without dispersion
But if the thing were so easy, biopics such as the one on Antonia Brico (The conductor by Maria Peters) would be successful. However, the need to embellish the protagonist, to create secondary characters and crushes weighs everything down. On the contrary, Entertainment, is a raw film that rings true, as it remains centered around the music. It is music — the talent to feel it and the intense work to share it — that allows Zahia Ziouani to transcend her origins in floor minor.
Because Zahia, woman of visible minority, child of immigrants, comes from Stains, city of the famous “red belt” (communist) of the Parisian suburbs, which moreover is in “the 93”, this department “plague” of the aforesaid suburb. With her cellist twin sister (radiant Lina El Arabi, whose presence illuminates the film), she is the object of jeers and contempt from her fellow Parisians when she crosses the Rubicon (the ring road). So imagine when she reveals to them that she wants to lead! One day, the great chef Sergiu Celibidache, played by the impeccable Niels Arestrup, who doesn’t even have to force himself to play the taciturn misanthrope, takes her under his wing. But all is not won…
What is wonderful in Entertainment, it’s the way to make sometimes the most trivial things tangible, for example the difficulty of practicing your cello after 8 p.m. in a dormitory town. As such, the strong presence of Zinedine Soualem, as a father touched by the grace of music, is a precious asset of the film. Music is thus constantly integrated into life, sometimes also in the form of noises or rhythms, during a metro journey.
Facing the Weakness
This teen’s sweet madness will go so far as to turn Stains into floor major, creating an orchestra around it. But this is where we would have liked the hard-hitting and caustic screenwriters of Tar (Todd Field, 2022) are at work for, like the confrontation between Lydia Tár and the student woke refusing to play Bach, carve even more ferociously the diatribe of Zahia Ziouani facing the communist mayor opposing the creation of the orchestra because of an alleged “elitism” of classical music.
“Symphonic music is elitist, but not in the way you think. She is elitist, because she brings everyone, from the 8e arrondissement or Seine-Saint-Denis, to be more demanding of themselves. I’m not saying music can change the world, but playing music can change people. “The reflection of the young woman is still well sent. A number of just sentences make this real film stand out on the music of decorative uselessness such as the recent Master(s) by Bruno Chiche.
The big downside of Entertainment is common to many films about conductors: the credibility of the actress’ gestures. In general, directors do not abuse these situations; Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar rushes into the pitfall by multiplying them from all angles. Direction is based on how a gesture will generate a sound. Oulaya Amamra, like others, gestural retrospectively decorates music in the making. We see that she has worked a lot on certain scenes, especially those of the lessons with Celibidache. But when she is not too careful, all the ceilings of ridicule are broken.
As such, the final scene, a sort of flash mob pathetic on the BoleroClaude Lelouch way of the poor, erodes part of the rating of love that this beautiful project had patiently constituted and proves once again that to complete a film is the most delicate of things.