On the island of Tahiti, in French Polynesia, the High Commissioner of the Republic must manage an increasingly insistent rumor, which stirs up the anger of the population. We would have spotted a submarine whose presence would announce a resumption of French nuclear tests…
At the Cannes Film Festival last year, where he was in the running for the Palme d’Or, Pacifiction – Torment on the Islands deeply divided moviegoers. Where some have seen in Albert Serra’s new opus (The death of Louis XIV, Freedom) a masterpiece of languor illustrating the weaving of human nature, others have spoken of an endless exercise in profound emptiness.
Outside of a festival context, the hypnotic effect of this impressionist drama, which borders on several genres without really rubbing shoulders with them, is undeniable. Film of atmospheres set in the contemporary postcolonial context of French Polynesia, Pacifiction – Torment on the Islands is above all the portrait of a high-ranking person caught between his duty to represent the French State in this part of the end of the world and his – sometimes unhealthy – proximity to his local constituents.
Not unlike at times the cinema of Claire Denis, the Catalan filmmaker orchestrates the slow paranoia into which the High Commissioner sinks, convinced that, even if he is the highest representative of the Republic in Polynesia, we tend to put him now apart. So he finds it difficult to manage these rumors circulating about new nuclear tests that France is preparing to carry out in the region, without being informed. And if it was true ?
Sometimes punctuated by more surreal scenes (this long sequence in a club where we move to the sound of electronic dance music), Pacifiction – Torment on the Islandswhich has just earned Benoît Magimel the César for best actor (he also won it last year thanks to In his lifetime, by Emmanuelle Bercot), will obviously not be to everyone’s taste. Fans of a more singular cinema will however find what they are looking for.
Indoors
Drama
Pacifiction – Torment on the Islands
Albert Serra
With Benoît Magimel, Pahoa Mahagafanau, Marc Susini
2:45 a.m.