Sometimes it happens that a close person acts in a really surprising, even shocking way. It is quite a commonplace situation. If necessary, the phrase “I don’t recognize you anymore” is often used by those around you. But what happens on the side of the one “whom we no longer recognize”? It is to this question that Mineby Roschdy Zem, who was inspired by events that occurred in his own family to design a film that is surprisingly universal in its findings.
The protagonist is named Moussa (Sami Bouajila). Divorced and father of two young adults, Nesrine (Nina Zem) and Amir (Carl Malapa), he remarried, but his second wife has just dumped him without explanation or return of calls. Always ready to help, or to manage, it depends, Samia (Meriem Serbah), Moussa’s sister, is never far away. Ditto for Salah (Rachid Bouchareb), their brother.
On the other hand, their other brother, Ryad (Roschdy Zem), is for his part rarely in the decor, taken as he is by his television notoriety.
At the beginning of the film, Moussa is presented as someone who nods and accepts everything without flinching: the casualness with which his children suck money from him, the benevolent interference of his sister, everyone who willingly speaks for him …
One evening, after a party with colleagues, Moussa takes a bad fall and suffers a major concussion. When he wakes up in the hospital, he is no longer the same, both literally, with his swollen forehead that disfigures him, and figuratively, with his completely changed attitude.
Because here he is, who not only no longer accepts anyone meddling in his affairs, but who quarrels and falls out with almost everyone.
While his family is moved and worried by this Moussa who is not “theirs”, only Ryad decides to see the positive in the situation. Taking the opposite view of the others, the latter indeed encourages Moussa to express himself rather than to repress himself as he did during his life.
Dramatically and psychologically speaking, all of this is very rich.
Frankness and fairness
It is even more so because Moussa, now devoid of any social filter, repeatedly states painful or embarrassing truths. In doing so, he acts as a revealing agent to “his own”, who, without warning, are suddenly forced to question themselves.
The scenario is in this finely observed, and as frank as it is fair in its presentation of the characters: no one is all good or all bad, nothing is all black or all white.
Roschdy Zem’s staging, intentionally not very conspicuous, favors long takes where people reveal themselves as if without their knowledge, through prolonged silence or fleeting expression.
Note that the actor-filmmaker, for the sake of creating a certain distance, given the autobiographical nature of the story, as he explained to us in an interview, co-wrote the screenplay with Maïwenn (who plays Emma, the disenchanted spouse of Riyadh). This is a happy decision, Mine thus transcending the anecdote to reach this universality evoked from the outset. An excellent surprise that this film.