I watched the last episode of Le Grand Bazar, director Baya Kasmi for M6 in 6 episodes.
There was a scene with the mother who has given birth under X and is thinking of the reasons why she must give up her baby for adoption. The midwife (a man) tells her the procedures, she has 3 days to decide, and if she gives up the baby, she must say good bye formally to the baby because the baby understands everything and also, the mother has a formal closure. So the mom tells her baby in so m y words why and how etc. Babies understand everything. V moving.
So finally the midwife who loves kids he adopts the baby with his wife. A black baby with white midwife father and arab-french mother who is a lawyer.
There are many details relating to immigrants way of thinking, branching and connecting two generations together. About how to use money how to make economic sense in everyday life. The movie is full of small everyday human stories, maybe its a wide sweeping brush of a portrait, but it has the potential to be developed into so many finer stories with more memorable and very specific details.
I could see how the different branches could really blossom into mulitple full fleshed stories, into movies. For example, the grandma from Algeria explains to the fat little girl - a grand daughter related via x-marriage of son in law - what is a batard (half breed), and that she herself was a batarde and that her own mother never called her by her name, but "batarde, batarde". She was not allowed to go to school and did all the house work like a locked up slave, no friends etc. I find this v cruel, but maybe its real. You never know. Implicit is the pre-history. Why was the mother so negative towards her own daughter? Batarde, maybe she was the child of a rape? Since there was the war during that period. etc etc. Implicit stories not told but if it were a tv series, there would be vaious buds that could grow into the stories with more and more details. Details makes the film more full and not so caricature of the immigrant experience.
Right now, its a bit like a catalogue of people stories.
The Asian part is very quick and maybe sketchy but its a known reality thats included in the broad picture of contemporary Asian French life - a little bud in the fabric of mixity in contemporary society.
The Arab older couple are played by very good actors, both the man and the woman, with lovely sensitive eyes.
Question, for the running water of human stories, what would make a film memorable?
What makes a good actor and a so-so actor?
Maybe we need truth, something that is not just an answer.
For example in a recent movie, "A Day in New York" by Woody Allen, we found out why the super tiger mom wants the son to do all these cultural preparations to become a learnt man... its because she was a former hooker and wants to have her son, her kids become somebody and not like herself, being a person who is at service to others without choice.
Allens film making is very smooth, everyone in the movie moves around in NY, the central park apts, huge, the street, the MET, in the section of Egyptian tombs - as if they were moving around in their own back yard. Very smooth, only an experienced director who knows his setting could pull it off so easily.
Here, equally, in an immigrant background, maybe we need more truly immigrant scenes and not stereotypical reactions. For example, how could the lawyer daughter not see the parents turmoil over working to bring up an un-immigrant experience for their own daughter?
It is possible if the daughter was not a smart lawyer - if she were a character who tries also to blend in very hard as a non immigrant kid, then she would be blind to everything thats immigrant oriented. As of now, the lawyer was played as if she truly - smart as she is - not know this basic principle of immigrants. Immigrants immigrate and go through all this trouble to have a new better life for their children. Its not a secret. Or if the daughter character has some weakness, not pretty, not so good at doing her everyday work compared to others, then we understand she has to fight for herself to the point of not noticing etc etc. But, who wants to watch that? Life is full of real characters like that already. What would make it memorable and not just factually correct?
The pot smoking grandfather who is a former guitarist is a fun character. The combination of every character seem to be a sample of everyone in society - but the show does not go into the inside of the person. The x wife of the mid-wife male lead is very pretty and delicate but even her neurotic behavior is not very convincing. Maybe her delivery is always in a rush, very speedy. I dont know exactly why.
This is a speedy comedy entertainment tv series. To be more moving, so others really want to see it, it needs maybe something more profound so viewers could truly be moved. The choice of settings of a lot of backgrounds are very interesting, in 60s office buildings, the façades very pop art is beautiful and slick.
I like it it has much promises.
Am sorry that there will not be a second season.
Maybe this comedy has to have a solid internal nut, something that sounds and feels of blood sweat and tears. It is not enough to be a stereotypical immigrant life story -- but but but, maybe the reality is really like this!
In that case, you have to bring in something more to give to the viewers to make the films realities augmented, reveal an angle that they have never thought of possible, so they could enjoy more - and not just a sugar coated reality of general facts - something much more than their daily lives of "no tears, its just dust in the eyes".
Also, due to the everyday videos made by everyone on their smart phones, in fact it is much harder to make a "reality" based movie. We have bona fide, good or bad, smart and slick to zero action reality videos everywhere already.
Some of the great outsider/insider, change of life, growing up stories I have seen in random order as they come into my head are the following:
1// "The little seamstress" - Zhou Xun actress.
2// Norwegian real time film of a boat cruise without any storyline. You just watch what you see outside the window of a cruise ship for several hours...
more...
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