This was the fourth Francophone film I saw in Glasgow that was directed by a woman and explored the possibilities of the family melodrama. Although in many ways a conventional narrative, there were several interesting facets of its setting and the screening was followed by a lively Q&A. The film is credited to Salima Glamine and Dimitri Linder as co-writers and directors of their first feature and in the Q&A Salima spoke first while Dimitri had one baby in his arms and another toddler having fun running around. The Q&A chair and the interpreter managed very well. Salima described herself as Algerian-French and the central character of the film is 17 year-old Amel played by Sofia Lesaffre as the daughter of a single-parent Algerian taxi driver (Pascal Elbe). I don’t remember any reference to Amel’s mother. Amel’s high school friends include a tearaway white girl Chloë (Salomé Dewaels)and Sima (Arsha Iqbal), a Pakistani girl from a traditional family. At the family wedding feast for Sima’s oldest brother we get the first inkling that Amel knows Mashir (Christopher Zeerak), Sima’s other brother who is 22.
Amel and Mashir have a secret relationship and they plan to find a way to escape family scrutiny by each separately moving to London. Amel tries to get a post as an au pair and Mashir is a computer engineer with prospects. All appears to be going well until the arrival of Mashir’s cousin, Noor (Atiya Rashid) who has been living in Berlin. She too joins the same high school class as Amel who tries to make her welcome. Noor believes that she will be able to marry a young man in Berlin, but now her parents are in Brussels and in contact with Mashir’s family there are all kinds of dangers as the inevitable meeting of parents prompts thoughts about a marriage between cousins.
‘For a Happy Life’ is a title that describes the dilemma for all concerned – how to act in such a way that everyone is happy. That’s probably not always possible, but some actions might be more damaging than others. Amel is clearly the character out on a limb. Fortunately Sofia Lesaffre gives a spirited performance in this lead role and her energy drives the film through its 85 minutes, ensuring a full-blown family melodrama. It’s no surprise that she strides around in her bright red jacket. I found the film intriguing and enjoyable, but I had lots of questions about the Pakistani community in Brussels, wondering how life for second generation teenagers might compare to that of young South Asians in Bradford.
Salima Glamine suggested that they simply chose the Pakistani community as a traditional community that might be threatened by interaction with a young woman like Amel. She explained that when she discovered there weren’t that many actors within the Belgian (or Parisian) Pakistani communities she used social media to find non-professionals who were prepared to join the cast. Only Javed Khan who plays Noor’s father was a professional actor (he has appeared in a number of Indian and British films. Since I don’t speak or understand French or Urdu well enough to detect accents I have no idea how the various family members in the film sound. The film seems to have gone down well with Belgian audiences and critics and it won both the audience and critics’ prizes at the Namur Francophone Film Festival. Nobody at the Glasgow screening mentioned the accents so I’m none the wiser on that score.
The film was presented in CinemaScope and I was impressed with its handling of a young romance and of the importance of social media in the lives of the young women in particular. There are shocks in the film and one is when a mobile phone is thrown out of a speeding car window. Needless to say the phone’s owner is soon seen ‘unboxing’ a new iPhone. In some ways, social media and traditional families don’t mix –things can happen too quickly and secrets can become known everywhere in a matter of seconds. It’s a far cry from the novels of the 19th century with hand-written letters and the reading of wills which seemed so important in generating melodrama presentations in theatre and early cinema adaptations. This is a first feature but Salima is an experienced actor and Dimitri has been a production manager on several high-profile Belgian films and I don’t think the film feels like a début directing effort.
Salima and Dimitri had worked before with youth groups in Paris and Brussels and we learned that so far it has been shown to around 5,000 teen agers in Belgium. It was important that the film’s ending has the suggestion of a future for the characters so many young audiences were asking for a sequel. One questioner, from Brussels, said he knew the Anderlecht area of the city very well but he wasn’t aware of the problems about arranged marriages which he ‘d noted were much more likely to be discussed in the British media. Salima’s response, that the community in Brussels is ‘first generation’ and more concerned about children ‘marrying out’ of the community, seems to make sense. Someone else asked if the actors raised any questions about being represented as the Pakistanis we saw in the film. Salima suggested that they did discuss the characters with the actors who suggested minor changes in the details but they were quite happy with the ‘core’ events of the story.
This is the kind of film we should see from Belgium in cinemas or on TV. My impression is that there are many interesting films about migration and the experiences of mixed communities coming from a range of European countries and we should be engaged with these issues in the UK. This is another reason why Brexit seems such a bad idea.
Here is a trailer in French (with French subs for the Urdu)
The Case for Global Film 