Robert Guédiguian has the habit of setting the action of his films in Marseille, oscillating in turn between tragedy and comedy. In 2019, the overwhelmingGloria Mundi however, suggested that the triumph of capitalism and everyone for themselves – against which the French filmmaker has been indignant since the start of his career – had got the better of his optimism. However, one does not campaign for more than forty years without being from time to time invigorated by victories, however small they may be.
This is what happened to the director when a tragedy – the collapse of the buildings on rue d’Aubagne, in 2018 in Marseille – led to unprecedented citizen mobilization and to the election, for the first time in 25 years old, from a left-wing coalition at town hall.
For his twenty-third film, And the party continues! the filmmaker was freely inspired by these events to focus on the relationship we have today with political engagement, using collapse and emptiness as a starting point to reinvent our existences and the stories that shape our societies — the bust of Homer also occupies a symbolic place in history.
Rosa, 60, nurse and head of the family, is in a hurry to become head of the list of the Marseille left, as a decisive election approaches. At the dawn of her retirement, rocked by disillusionment, she finds in a budding love, the vitality of those close to her and the power of art the strength to put her dreams into motion.
Around her unfolds a joyful gallery of characters – a communist brother, two sons and a daughter-in-law carried by their youth and the greatness of their convictions, a lover who grows in starting over – who form a non-traditional, but united family through its values and its deep commitment to justice.
Punctuated with social and political reflections consistent with all of his work, Robert Guédiguian delivers here, first and foremost, a film on the strength of the bond. Surrounded by his unwavering allies – his muse, Ariane Ascaride, as well as Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Gérard Meylan – he repeats that there is no repetition, no vain struggles as long as they are dear to someone A.
Poverty, immigration, housing crisis, exhaustion of hospital staff and activist fatigue… Everything is there in this film which one might think is too busy, but which is rather intended to be a portrait of contemporary commitment; fragmented, more focused on individual concerns than on the result.
Faced with this observation, Robert Guédiguian chose light, literally and figuratively. In several scenes, the lighting is stylized and the characters are magnified in such a way as to reinforce the dreamlike or utopian aspect of the subject. The film assumes artifice in an almost theatrical proposition, which even pays homage to American musical comedies, both through certain low-angle shots and the intensity of the soundtrack.
With a poetic, almost melodramatic approach, the director chooses excess, both in celebration and in cinema. The result ? A solar film that makes you want to smile. Who says better ?