Virginie Efira’s quest for resilience, a moving survivor of an attack

How do you recover from a shooting after seeing dozens of people around you die? How to resume the course of one’s life when one came so close to losing it? And how to integrate his relatives in his personal reconstruction when they have not experienced the trauma? Here are the questions raised by See Paris againthe film by Alice Winocour inspired by the attacks of November 13, 2015, which killed 130 people in cafes in the capital and in the Bataclan performance hall.

Mia (Virginie Efira) is a Russian translator. She lives with Vincent (Grégoire Colin), with whom she has dinner in a Parisian restaurant after a long day at work. While her companion pretends to have a professional meeting and leaves her alone, she goes to have a drink in a café. It is here, a few minutes later, that she will find herself in the middle of a terrorist attack that will leave few survivors. After having put her life on hold for several months in the countryside, she finds Paris, with no memory of the tragedy, but with the desire to retrace the thread of the evening in order to succeed in rebuilding herself.

From the first seconds of the film, the staging immerses us in a stressful atmosphere, one that invites us to observe the smallest detail, capture the noises and silences ready to tip the plot into chaos at any time. First immersed in Mia’s troubled, almost premonitory thoughts, the audience, never really serene, saw the shock up close, sudden, short, violent. The character played by Virginie Efira sets off in search of answers, with this need to review everything, to understand everything in order to overcome her trauma. She will meet Thomas (Benoît Magimel), seriously injured in the legs, who would prefer to forget everything. A certainty will bring them together: that nothing will ever be the same again, neither for them nor for their loved ones who were not at the scene of the shooting.

The strength of the dialogues makes it possible to account for the loneliness of the victims. “I was in the attack”says Mia several times, gradually becoming friends with the members of a support group. “We are ghosts”summarizes Thomas, who seeks above all to “come alive again”. Disturbing credibility in their long journey towards the “diamond of trauma” – a symbol of both physical and psychological healing -, Virginie Efira and Benoît Magimel embody a complementary and joyful duo in a powerful film that cannot leave anyone indifferent.

“My brother was at the Bataclan, he survived, I was texted part of the night of the attacksaid Alice Winocour during the previews of her film, which was presented in May at Cannes as part of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. Through my brother, I had access to the world of survivors, I was inspired by all these testimonies trying to be faithful to them. The challenge is to rebuild, but we can’t rebuild ourselves.”emphasizes the director.

Gender : drama
Director: Alice Winocourt
Actors: Virginie Efira, Benoît Magimel, Grégoire Colin
Country : France
Duration : 1h45
Exit : September 7, 2022
Distributer : Pathe

Summary: in Paris, Mia is caught in an attack in a brasserie. Three months later, when she still hasn’t managed to resume the course of her life and only remembers the event in snatches, Mia decides to investigate her memory to find her way back to life. possible happiness.