David O'ConnellHANDS UP @ The French Film Festival
March 5th 2011 23:43
Hands Up, Romain Goupil’s somewhat stagnant drama of one family’s attempt to protect an eleven year old girl, Milana (Linda Doudaeva), from a fate they ethically and morally oppose, does pointedly question policies concerned with the deportation of illegals from France. Though its heart may be in the right place, the end result is a film which fails to capitalise on the topicality of its themes, becoming sidetracked with a portrait of childhood that runs the inherent dramatic possibilities aground in tedium.
In what is a minor misstep, the films open with an older version of Milana in 2067 looking back on her crucial twelfth year of life as an undocumented Chechen in Paris. Though she fits in with her peers and has no shortage of friends, police raids in her building bring to light the questionable status of many of her neighbours.
She forms the strongest attachment to 12 year old Blaise (Jules Ritmanic) who’ll do anything to win her affection. After a communal meeting, Blaise’s mother Cendrine (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) decides to act upon her conscience by absorbing Milana into her home until a better solution can be found or the tide of change blows over.
Milana’s transition is relatively uncomplicated though she experiences a nagging sense of guilt for the happiness and protection her new family provides. Together they travel with school friends to a holiday home in Brittany but upon return the authorities’ pursuit of illegals steps up a gear and the children collectively take measures to protect their most vulnerable friend without the consensus of any adults.
Ultimately Hands Up (2010)suffers from an over-emphasis on evoking the camaraderie of the children and their innocent ploy to protect a dear friend from the claws of harsh social justice. The action lingers on them to an irritating extent – their general fooling around and playful interaction congesting sequence after sequence - whilst the behind the scenes manoeuvring of Cendrine and, to a lesser extent her husband Luc (director Goupil), falls short of ramming home the validity of an adult perspective.
The children are all fine actors - in the sense that they can be generally annoying and headache-inducing just like their real-life counterparts - whilst the always solid Bruni-Tedeschi (so good in Francois Ozon’s masterful 5x2 (2004) amongst many others) anchors the drama with a humane insight and suitably protective maternal presence.
A more rigid approach the tightening the screws on the narrative whilst still allowing space for the children’s story to blossom might have been a decent compromise for Goupil who also penned the script. The noble intentions behind his efforts to shine a light on the French government’s inadequacy in dealing with foreigners gives it some credibility, as does an absence of sentimentality. It’s just the execution that lets it down, the film lacking in genuine bite. The sci-fi framing, too, is moot and unnecessary; a traditional voiceover without any revelation of context would have been equally persuasive.
The 2011 French Film Festival begins on March 8 and 9 in Sydney and Melbourne respectively before progressing to other states.
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