“The Drift of the Continents (in the south)”, a scathing comedy where humanitarian and family crisis mingle

Lionel Baier’s filmography looks like a compass. After Like thieves (in the east) and The long waves (in the west), course towards a new cardinal point for the Swiss director. To shoot his latest feature film, Continental Drift (to the south), he put his camera in Sicily. He made a bittersweet film, with caustic humour, presented last May at the Directors’ Fortnight of the 75th Cannes Film Festival.

To Catania, a port city in southern Italy, Nathalie Adler (Isabelle Carré), liaison officer for the European Commission, must organize a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to a refugee camp. Before the arrival of the two heads of state, she first receives their two representatives for a “rehearsal” ahead of a visit presented as “spontaneous”.

Problem, for these two agents of the European ship: the camp is “too clean”, “not dramatic enough”. “Sorry but, there is no misery”, one of them even dares. The film will then never cease to mock, with a biting humour, the hypocritical relationships, between utopian and disconnected discourse on the one hand, ubiquitous bureaucracy and humanitarian impasse on the other, that maintains “the great European family ” with exiles and migration issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy_vTS6ZKrg

During the rehearsal, Nathalie comes face to face with her son Albert (Théodore Pellerin), a volunteer with an association involved in the camp. Problem, there again: the two have not seen each other for years, Nathalie having abandoned her son to discover his own homosexuality. Between two Franco-German bickering, and with the migratory tragedy in the background, mother and son will try to pick up the pieces.

We easily go from laughter to tears in the eye in this film which likes to mix genres. In addition to the humorous or dramatic passages, certain scenes are almost fantastic or absurd. The beginning and the end reserve beautiful moments of emotion and weave an interesting political reflection on the possible resistances, in particular village, local, to a global system (the European Union) dehumanizing. Between the two, the film suffers from a few lengths and a somewhat messy aspect which sometimes gives the viewer the impression of being a little lost.

Finally, and we can regret it, the film leaves little room for the situation of the exiles. Unless it’s a way to send everyone back to their own inaction, including the spectators focused on the adventures of mother and son. It’s so easy, even for the director, to look away. During a scene in the Catania refugee camp, a young woman addresses a small militant crowd – including Albert, the rebellious son, who has come to demonstrate, phone in hand, in front of the gates facing journalists and representatives of the delegation. European: “You film us all the time, but do you care about our feelings?”

The sheet

Gender : comedy, drama
Director: Lionel Bayer
Cast: Isabelle Carré, Théodore Pellerin, Ursina Lardi
Country : Swiss
Duration : 1h29
Exit : August 24, 2022
Distributer : The Diamond films

Summary: Nathalie Adler is on mission for the European Union in Sicily. She is notably responsible for organizing the next visit of Macron and Merkel to a migrant camp. Presence with high symbolic value, in order to show that everything is under control. But who still wants to believe in this European family on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Probably not Albert, the son of Nathalie, an activist committed to an NGO, who arrives without warning when he has cut ties with her for years. Their reunion will be more explosive than this diplomatic trip…