Isabelle Huppert is moving in the role of a depressed cop in “Les gens d’à côté” by André Téchiné

Angry black blocks versus depressed police officers, André Téchiné’s new film reconciles opposites in a film that advocates nuance and listening to others.

André Téchiné signs a social chronicle which stages two antagonistic worlds, which he explores through the meeting between two characters who were never destined to cross paths, much less to become friends. The people next doorstarring a moving Isabelle Huppert as a depressed policewoman, will be released in theaters on July 10, 2024.

Lucie is having a hard time getting over the suicide of her husband, a police officer, like her. Despite her grief and increasingly difficult working conditions, Lucie goes back to work. The arrival of a young couple and Rose, their little girl, breaks her solitude. Even though she quickly understands that Yann, her neighbor, is a young anti-police activist close to the black blocs, Lucie continues without saying anything to frequent the family and to take care of Rose, as if nothing had happened.

After telling in Soulmates The amnesia of a young soldier, André Téchiné stages in this new feature film the difficulties and the malaise in the French police, and the fracture that separates the forces of law and order from civil society. This phenomenon, which is usually observed on television in hot reports showing violent clashes between the police and groups of masked individuals, is approached here from a human and intimate angle.

Who are these police officers, what do they experience on a daily basis, what are their working conditions, their suffering, and on the other hand, who are these masked individuals ready to beat up cops? This is what this latest feature film by the director of My favorite season.

The story focuses on the two sides, in the form of an unexpected friendship between two representatives of two seemingly irreconcilable groups. “We don’t live in the same world”underlines Yann, who points out the impossibility of living together. “But perhaps we could make an effort to achieve this.”Lucie retorts.

As soon as each person knows what place the other occupies in society, friendship becomes a matter of conscience. And that is the whole point of the film, which makes the masks fall, on both sides, and reveals the human dimension and nuances in each person’s convictions.

The director highlights the malaise of the police, and paints another beautiful portrait of a woman with Julia (Hasia Hersi), Yann’s wife, who likes his keen sense of social justice, and approves of his ideas, but not his way of defending them.

We thus become attached to the characters, and to the plot with Isabelle Huppert embodying with overwhelming accuracy this character of a policewoman in mourning, for whom this friendship with the “enemy” will act for her as a form of restorative justice.

A subtle character, just like Yann, played by the excellent Nahuel Perez Biscayart (See you up thereAnd 120 beats per minute and more recently His father’s life)This black bloc with a heavy criminal record hides a sensitive soul, an antisocial, an artist for whom drawing is not a sufficient outlet to calm the anger that inhabits him.

An unexpected bond is woven between Lucie and Yann, a real encounter, which we hope will be beneficial for each of them, humanity and nuance taking precedence over violence. “cinema experience, a utopia”summarizes André Téchiné in the presentation of the film.

Interesting in substance, the film gets a little lost in a featureless staging, a camera that moves all the time without us understanding why, and some slightly outdated narrative techniques, such as the omnipresent voice-over.

Gender : drama
Director: André Techiné
Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Hafsia Herzi, Nahuel Perez Biscayart
Country : France
Duration : 1h25 min
Exit : July 10, 2024
Distributer : Day2party
Synopsis : Lucie is a technical and scientific police officer. Her solitary daily life is disrupted by the arrival in her residential area of ​​a young couple, parents of a little girl. While she becomes fond of her new neighbors, she discovers that Yann, the father, is an anti-cop activist with a heavy criminal record. Lucie’s moral conflict between her professional conscience and her budding friendship for this family will shake her certainties…