L´ Esquive

Colour, 35 mm
France, 2003, 117 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Fifteen-year-old Abdelkrim, called Krimo, lives in the suburbs of Paris, in a district inhabited mainly by poor Arab immigrants. His father is in jail, his mother struggles with the burden of everyday cares, and the kid, like his neighbourhood peers, just hangs out feeling bored. Then he gets to know the attractive Lydia, and she takes him to auditions for a Marivaux play to be put on by a group of drama enthusiasts from school. A hitherto unknown world of art and mellifluous literary French opens up before Krimo, and it seems that he’ll get the part of Harlequin is he can learn his lines. The adolescent boy falls in love with Lydia and his theatre experience helps him find the words to declare himself. But even in the suburbs of Paris two very different worlds can collide...

About the director

Abdellatif Kechiche (b. 1960) is a screenwriter and director who started out as an actor. He debuted in film in 1984 with Un thé a la menthe, and has also been seen in, among others, Mutisme, Les innocents, Un vampire au paradis, Bezness, Le secret de policinelle, Marteau rouge and La boite magique. He came out as a director with La faute à Voltaire (2001); L’Esquive is his second feature. ‘People often talk to me about an ethnographic film, yet my approach is totally different,’ the director said. ‘I don’t aspire to transcribing blocks of raw reality. Instead, along with my actors and crew, I reconstruct a world that is ours. It is fictitious but crossed by flashes of emotion that bring it to life. L’Esquive was a project I had put forward a long time before La faute à Voltaire, in 1993-94. At the time, no television channels or producers believed in it. There has been such a stigmatizing of poor areas in the suburbs that it’s become almost revolutionary to place any action there, unless it’s related to gang rapes, drugs, girls in veils or forced marriages. I wanted to talk about love and theatre for a change.’