A regiment returning from Afghanistan stops for three days in a hotel in Cyprus alternating relaxation sessions and group therapy. After dividing critics at Cannes, where it was presented at Un Certain Regard, the film of the Coulin sisters arrives in theaters and wants to confront the public with the contemporary military reality.
The Great D-Day landings
French cinema is looking for itself. Long accused of sinking into "the political vacuum", he is trying to get closer to the current traumas. After Alice Winocour's Maryland or Clément Cogitore's fabulous Ni le ciel ni la terre, Voir du pays takes in turn as its subject the stress (and distress) of the military in Afghanistan. For the section of Aurore and Marine, the two main protagonists, the war is over. But before returning to their relatives, soldiers must go through a "decompression airlock" allowing officers to measure their reintegration capacity. There, they must relive their traumatic memories thanks to a virtual and immersive reality process of which they are the narrators, a kind of unhealthy experience echoing A Clockwork Orange. A great scriptwriting idea, this system close to video games (Call of duty will also be cited) allows some successful moments of cinema, confronting soldiers with a war in ugly and unreal computer graphics. A 3D confessional that also exposes regimental secrets and revives tensions. We think of the little-known film A Crime in the Head by John Frankenheimer where soldiers returning from Iraq suffer PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) while hiding a state scandal. But this is only one of the (too?) many tracks launched by the Coulin sisters. The primary interest of the film lies in the contrast, in this five-star hotel, between ravaged soldiers and exalted tourists. Each tourist activity becomes a matter of tension. The boat trip, the nightclub, the seduction sequence are all pretexts for these "new Rambos" to import the war into a new territory.
Raw nerves
But the filmmakers quickly sweep away this promising subject to tackle another battlefield, which obviously interests them more: the workings of the military administration and its warlike and misogynistic mentality. The two heroines, played by Ariane Labed and the amazing Soko, full of anger and modesty like Adèle Haenel in The Fighters, face brainless young people who confuse courage and virility. Alas, on this ground the scenario is more slippery and fragile, from the ill-brought denunciation of ordinary machismo to a final twist more than expected. Even if any comparison is futile, the film would have benefited from having the restraint and distance of its elder Neither heaven nor earth. Here everything is explicit and the subjects of reflection are overexposed to the face of the spectator, making Voir du pays look more like a documentary work. The CVs of the two directors are probably not for nothing. The camera thus highlights the mental and physical weaknesses of the characters, inviting themselves with them in the shower and filming the bruised skin, once, twice, three times… Where the film knows how to be modest with the feelings of the characters, it sometimes gets lost in the ease to illustrate its point. The desire for closeness and attachment (which we feel sincere) with the two soldiers suffers, as well as the empathy necessary for emotion.
These defects, probably stemming from the too strong will to do well and to say everything, does not take away the pleasure of seeing a real auteur film that develops a certain form of tension that, alas, does not quite transform.
