David O'ConnellSKIRT DAY @ The French Film Festival
March 1st 2010 05:03
A classroom hostage drama with glaring deficiencies, Skirt Day still manages to create tension from its limited scenario whilst potentially reviving the career of once iconic French beauty Isabelle Adjani. She plays Sonia Bergarac, a teacher stuck in the kind of hellish establishment we more readily associate with inner-city American schools. Here a range of ethnicities converge, causing tensions to boil over. Director Jean-Paul Lilienfeld wastes little time on a preamble; ten minutes in and a gun has spilled from the bag of an aggressive student, Mouss (Yann Ebonge), landing in the hands of Bergarac. She retreats, sensing the moment’s volatility; soon she’s holding them all at bay, weapon poised and in fear of her life.
We learn that this day is merely the culmination of a long period of torment and disrespect within the school environment; Bergarac seems isolated, effectively ostracised long ago by the rest of the staff. There are various attempts at uprising, revolt, even rational discussion, but the group becomes locked down in a stalemate after accidental gunfire alerts the rest of the school to the drama unfolding. Lilienfeld’s conventional structure accentuates the tense hostage situation whilst alternatively addressing the attempts of a police negotiator, Labouret (Denis Podalydes), to bring a rapid end to the situation and stall the charge of the media circus raising its tent outside.
There’s a strong focus on the school principal’s (Jackie Berroyer) repellant attempts at damage control through character assassination. He tells anyone who’ll listen that Bergarac has always been a loose cannon, slightly unhinged and most tellingly - guilty of provocation in her choice of attire. Ultimately, though, Skirt Day is more about the uneasy mix of minorities in modern Paris. In that respect, it’s certainly an eye-opening snapshot of societal ills, even if few of the students are fleshed out into fully-formed creations. Mostly they represent caricatures for the sake of segregation, ensuring neat alliances within the group.
So how does Adjani fare in her comeback - a role which recently won her a Cesar for Best Actress? It’s a somewhat erratic but commendable performance given its rigorous demands. It can’t be easy sustaining a certain pitch of fright, outrage and hysteria for so long with little room for pause. Her occasional mocking of the students’ mannerisms and hypocrisy comes across as slightly forced and silly but otherwise Adjani holds the escalating drama together with her intensity.
The young actors are uniformly decent though they’re an extremely unsympathetic bunch to say the least, poisoned by prejudice and ignorance, full of seething resentments they don’t seem to fully comprehend the nature of. Podalydes is strong as the negotiator though it’s a thankless, clichéd role; he even has the ignominious distraction of a wife threatening to leave him as the siege continues to shape-shift in the foreground. His domestic troubles feel like padding, a cursory attempt at humanising him, and lead nowhere interesting.
The ending feels overwrought and somewhat melodramatic, but even more problematic is the use of rock music over the last couple of scenes. It’s a serious miscalculation, deadening the more naturalistic tone the film tries hard to cultivate until that point. It does leave a slightly bitter taste in the mouth, though not enough to cancel out the vigour of Adjani’s presence or the interesting socio-political issues underlined by Lilienfeld’s screenplay.
Trailer here.
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Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by Paul Martin
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Paul, I read that too on Matt Ravier's site. Apparently the film was originally made for TV but got released in cinemas almost simultaneously. There were a couple of moments when Adjani seemed to go over the top but overall I thought she was pretty good. I'm still shocked that she won the Cesar for it though; it seems like quite a left-field choice. Hopefully the Oscars will see a similar result, i.e. any judgment that avoids giving Sandra Bullock the award!!