The German philosopher Oswald Spengler, in his work “The decline of the West”, left this sentence: “Politics sacrifices men to the end; men fall in love with an idea”. Spaniard Albert Serra has managed to become one of the most acclaimed directors of art and non-fiction cinema. Director who does not skimp on classifying himself as “the best editor in the world” It is one of “the five best directors” of the sector, apparently steps out of his comfort zone to show off his less cryptic work with “Pacifiction”presented in the Official Selection of the 75th Cannes Film Festival.
Serra, who has long been betting on French audiovisual production (although, it should be noted, he had the courtesy to preview his work earlier in Spain, as his premiere is scheduled for November 9 in France), offers what is, at least artistically, his least experimental film. “Pacifiction” moves its plot to the island of Tahiti, the best known of French Polynesia, and to like a High Commissioner of the Fifth Republic, De Roller, must anticipate the popular sentiment of citizenship. The film portrays him as cold and calculating, with impeccable manners and apparent self-control.
Without a doubt, it is a contemporary portrait of Serra’s usual historical characters, De Roller could very well have been one of the participants in the orgies and the cancaneo in the gardens of Versailles in ‘Liberté’ or one of the intriguing aristocrats of the French court in “The Death of Louis XIV”. He has that mean and cynical character with which he represents the pride of power, Serra captures a reality of which he speaks little, warning of a nuclear threat due to rumors that the French state has resumed nuclear testing in the areawhich causes the feeling that, at any moment, a revolt could break out.
Tahiti became the portrait of the exuberant sunset
Under a tone of tense calm, the film traces the decadent aspect of Tahiti, belonging to the Gallic community overseas and which Serra portrays itself as a sort of colony dependent on an old-time image to attract tourists. Now Serra tries to play so much with the possible meaning he wants to give to the film, that he never finishes making any idea come true. Yes, it is clear that for the director, French Polynesia is like a kind of declining paradise, taking a last breath and from which different ideological debates can be created depending on who sees the film, but Serra never stops showing his intentions, without forgetting that he leaves the dialogues empty and too cryptic.
In a way, The entire feature film can be summed up in a sentence uttered by Benoît Magimel in a moment of euphoria: “politics is a disco”. And yes, Tahiti, despite intentions to turn it into a disinherited Eden, looks awfully beautiful. However, the 165-minute length of the film is not justified in any way, despite being the director’s most narrative. Magimel is magnificent, but he would also have embodied a rooster. Together with him, a diverse group of characters, including those played by Marc Susini, Sergi López and, above all, Pahoa Mahagafanau, who plays a transsexual woman whose presence offers a contrast to the High Commissioner.
Under the layer of auteur cinema that shuns any complacency with the public, ‘Pacifiction’ continues to be the ideal proposal for fans of Serra’s filmography, which have increased with each new Catalan proposal. Of course, it has the merit of being more aesthetically surprising than its two previous films and of not producing, at least, an extremely grotesque sensation, like the one left by ‘Liberté’.
Note: 5
The best: The exuberant real settings of the film and Benoît Magimel.
Worse: The situations are tremendously simple and their dialogues are trivial.
Source: E Cartelera
