Review
Reviewed Work(s): Pacifiction by Pierre-Olivier Bardet, Albert Serra and Baptiste Pinteaux
Review by: Robert Koehler
Source: Cinéaste, SPRING 2023, Vol. 48, No. 2 (SPRING 2023), pp. 55-56
Published by: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
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Marshall (2017). In fact, Till already feels
old-fashioned because the shift away from
Pacifiction I have spent some time with Serra over the
years, in many different settings, and despite
Black Respectability Cinema is well under Produced by Pierre-Olivier Bardet; directed by his outward manner (somewhat shy, likably
way. More and more films are approaching Albert Serra; screenplay by Albert Serra and so, mixed with a wit and a spry stylishness
racism obliquely. Get Out (2017) did it; Baptiste Pinteaux; cinematography by Artur that doesn’t hide that he’s proudly Catalan),
Queen and Slim (2019) did it; Nope (2022) Tort; edited by Albert Serra, Albert Tort, and I’ve been able to get glimpses of his deeper
did it very circuitously. Watchmen (2019) Ariadna Ribas; production design by Sebastian concerns, and they start with a statement he
did it and Lovecraft Country (2020) tried. Vogler; original music by Marc Verdaguer and made one night during a festival: “What mat-
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) hovered Joe Robinson; starring Benoît Magimel, Pahoa ters? Bodies, bodies…” From the beginning of
near the borders of hagiography but ulti- Mahagafanau, Marc Susini, Matahi Pambrun, his filmography, up to and including his latest
mately avoided it by putting a deeply flawed Alexandre Melo, and Sergi López. Color, movie, Pacifiction, Serra’s cinema has
character front and center. French, Tahitian, and Portuguese dialogue with revolved around human bodies, their mean-
Perhaps the best example of Emmett English subtitles, 162 min. A Grasshopper Film ing, their force, poetry, grace, ugliness,
Till’s story as art can be found in Percival and Gratitude Films release, dynamism, color; how bodies affect other
Everett’s masterful novel The Trees (2021), a https://grasshopperfilm.com. bodies and how these relations form the basis
wickedly funny revenge fantasy in which of a mise en scène unique in cinema.
the living relatives of Till’s killers are mur- To say that Albert Serra is the bravest When Pacifiction premiered in Cannes last
dered under very unsavory circumstances. European filmmaker isn’t an overstatement. It year, it marked Serra’s wildly overdue arrival
Ultimately, the translation of historical may be even understating things, since no in the festival’s official competition, an inclu-
injustice into art can best be achieved by filmmaker from any other continent in recent sion that some read as Cannes finally catching
moving past bowdlerized realism and offer- years has made movies about Don Quixote up to the cutting edge (which it occasionally
ing up something more textural, something (Honor de Cavalleria, 2006), Birdsong (El cant does), and no doubt made easier given that
that a documentary cannot do better. An dels ocells, 2008), a 101-hour “Kassel Docu- the movie is in French, stars Benoît Magimel,
example of this is Regina King’s wonderful menta” project combining texts by Johann and takes the viewer to the lush French Poly-
One Night in Miami (2020) in which four Peter Eckermann, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and nesian setting of Tahiti, where Magimel plays
famous Black guys hang out in a motel R. W. Fassbinder (Els tres porquets, 2013), the character of De Roller, the island’s French
room in Miami and shoot the shit. That Dracula linked with Casanova (Story of My High Commissioner. But if any of this may
actually happened. But the film and the play Death, 2013), the final days of Louis XIV (The sound like a crafty set of concessions on
it was based on could only imagine what Death of Louis XIV, 2016), and French lib- Serra’s part to get into Cannes’ Big Kids
transpired that night. ertines having a wild night of sex in the forest room, you’re forgetting what a Serra movie
There is a wonderful sequence in the (his masterpiece, Liberté, 2019). Though sub- looks, sounds, and feels like, the composite of
film in which Malcolm, jumpy as a cat, and ject matter alone is never enough—and with which has always countered the norms of
keenly aware that his days are numbered, Serra, it is often the most minimal of starting mainstream European art cinema.
tries to convince Jim Brown that he needs points—it suggests an ambitious grasp of These norms require the inclusion of a big
to take up the fight for social justice. Brown canonical elements of Western civilization name to secure funding (Magimel is some
looks at him quizzically and asks, “What is that none of his (Western) contemporaries kind of name, but not a red-carpet star), the
it with you light-skinned dudes, you’re remotely matches, as well as a radical vision primacy of a not-too-difficult-to-follow nar-
always the most out there, the most radical, that has evolved from detailed depictions of rative (no), a strong emotional pitch (again,
like you know, W.E.B. Du Bois.” Maybe men operating on the distant extremes of aus- no), a literary or culturally attuned (prefer-
something like that happened. Maybe it terity to people living in heightened states of ably left) sensibility, and some pretty images.
didn’t. But after I watched the film, I had flagrant libertinism. These poles of human The latter two do factor into Pacifiction, but
the feeling that I had been with Jim Brown, existence are missing almost entirely from not in the easiest ways. The cultural element
Sam Cooke, Cassius Clay, and Malcolm. current cinema. Depictions of characters in is perhaps the most interesting and complex,
Something I didn’t feel after three hours states of physical denial or unharnessed sexual while the pretty pictures of the Tahitian land-
and twenty minutes of Spike Lee’s 1992 freedom seem to belong to another era—the scape point to a fascinating comparison of
biopic Malcolm X. time of Bresson and Pasolini—and certainly this work to Serra’s previous features. And
Hamstrung by an outdated rulebook not to our relatively blinkered and conserva- yet, taken together, Pacifiction—for all its
that demands unblemished backstories for tive era when far too few film artists appear to outwardly “plotty” elements—represents one
its Black heroes, Till is at its best when it is be truly free to the outer realms of what it of Serra’s most thorough rejections of the
focused on Mamie-Till’s Mobley’s agency— means to be alive, and how these affect one’s expectations put upon art cinema filmmak-
an agency fueled by her fierce love for her physical realities. ers: from those seeding them money; from
son in life and in death. Musician and film-
maker Laurie Anderson once wrote, “I
believe that the purpose of death is the
release of love.” One of the film’s achieve-
ments is its illumination of the relationship
between this release of love and activism.
Chukwu does a fine job of tracing the path
of Till-Mobley’s furious love for her son—
transitioning from possessive grief to radi-
cal activism—as, over time, she begins to
see the death of her only child as a part of
something far greater than her personal
tragedy. As she takes her place in the ranks
of the righteously aggrieved, she comes to
understand the grief of others, and in this
company she finds the courage to go on
and, ultimately, to fight the power. French High Commissioner De Roller (Benoît Magimel) visits with Tahitian dancer
—Mary F. Corey Shannah (Pahoa Mahagafanau) at their home in this scene from Albert Serra’s Pacifiction.
CINEASTE, Spring 2023 55
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(Sergi López) where straight and queer
patrons freely intermingle, and appears to be
taking it on his own to investigate the navy?
De Roller finds the sudden arrival of a
shadowy French naval crew, led by the mys-
terious Admiral (Marc Susini), to be suspi-
cious, particularly when they are apparently
staging reconnaissance missions in the
oceans rumored to be the first stages in
France’s re-introducing nuclear weapons in
Polynesian territory since the Nineties. De
Roller spends long hours trying to get a han-
dle on what’s going on, but he never gets
closer to understanding the true purpose of
In Pacifiction, De Roller (Benoît Magimel) meets with indigenous political dissidents who the activity. He’s out of his element, over his
question him about rumors of the resumption of French nuclear testing on the island. head, a paper pusher who is as in the dark of
State machinations as the locals he’s always
sales companies representing the movie to Virgin Islands. Thus, De Roller is a man who trying to assuage and sweet-talk. Once again,
the international marketplace; from pro- must listen to two masters at once, his bosses the perspective on this bureaucrat runs
grammers selecting films for major festivals; in Paris and Tahitians around him. Serra’s counter to expectation—the viewer is placed
and from distributors getting the movie to depiction of him in this regard is the movie’s in De Roller’s puzzled point of view, feeling
exhibitors in national territories. first great surprise: he’s not the object of empathetic to a little man overwhelmed by
Serra represents a challenge to this status ridicule or standard lefty critique, the usual greater political/military forces. In the end,
quo, naturally producing a counterreaction, buffoonish punching bag of anticolonialist De Roller is a well-meaning fellow and the
which, in Cannes, can often come from the storytelling. Rather, De Roller is genuinely model host who wants the best for everyone
trade press having to file reviews on the spot, sensitive and, well, really into all things but who himself feels bested.
sometimes written by critics who already dis- Tahitian, down to and including the kinds of All of this plays out against a Tahitian
like the filmmaker going into the screening. tribal-inspired dances that he enthusiastically land- and seascape so elemental and sensual
Echoing similar trade rejections of Pedro helps choreograph (he urges the dancers to that it mocks the petty human activity going
Costa’s Colossal Youth (2006), which, be as violent and physical as possible during a on within it, photographed by Artur Tort
like Pacifiction, managed to play in Cannes’ number resembling a cockfight). (Serra’s regular cinematographer since Els
main competition, most of this press corps One of these dancers is Shannah (Pahoa tres porquets) in wide-screen aspect ratio on
deeply disliked the movie for its deliberately Mahagafanau), a trans woman and his lover, a Canon’s small Black Magic Pocket cameras.
slow pace, apparent lack of a dramatic build, fascinating figure of modern gender fluidity Serra is rigorously antiromantic, even as his
and seemingly unclear story developments. who feels more contemporary than anything cinema since Honor de Cavelleria has been
Take it from me—it’s hard work filing on- else in this movie, set more or less in the pre- made in often physically imposing and lush
the-spot in Cannes while noticing when a sent (although Shannah is also part of a long settings, which become part of each film’s
major work of art is right in front of you. The Polynesian tradition of so-called “third sex” essence and meaning. The forest of Liberté is
program’s sheer pace and volume, the pres- identity called māhū), and whose friendship both a comforting refuge for a group of spir-
sure to have a hot take and not miss that “It” with De Roller makes the bureaucrat seem ited and daring libertines and a natural, pos-
movie, the lack of any time to reflect on what notably progressive. Serra has, especially sibly dangerous zone of wild, unleashed
you’ve watched—all combine to conspire since Story of My Death, delved more into sex nature where sexual conventions no longer
against the kind of cinema that Serra makes. and sexuality, and while Pacifiction lacks the apply, just as the harsh deserts of El cant dels
His is a Godardian cinema in the sense that it extreme sexual activity of his recent work, the ocells are perfect antonyms for a harsh, deter-
stakes out a position, an aesthetic, one that is new work’s embrace and upfront depiction of mined theology.
consciously polemical and emphatic, brim- postgender identity is a dramatic step forward The remarkable mise en scène in Pacific-
ming with ideas, demanding that audiences in the filmmaker’s ongoing mapping of tion shifts between interiors often shrouded in
adjust to the art work’s sensibility and not the greater sexual possibilities. When a visiting a boozy nighttime vibe of sexual possibilities
other way around, and which comes with French author is wined and dined by De (Serra slows these scenes down to the maxi-
surprises and deep pleasures for the attentive Roller, he extolls her embrace of libertinism— mum, simulating almost exactly the kind of
viewer—the kind of viewer that a hothouse directly linking them with a gallery of previ- suspended animation that flows from an erotic
festival atmosphere discourages. ous Serra heroes of sexual limitlessness, far intoxication) and exteriors where Tahiti’s
Magimel’s De Roller is the obsessive cen- beyond even the standard expressions in most craggy mountains cut a stark, overwhelming
ter of the movie from beginning to end; he is queer and gender-nonconforming cinema. backdrop. Or the Pacific is a murky liquid
the man of French civil government, the Serra’s/Magimel’s De Roller thus makes a thing hiding nefarious military machina-
quintessential schmoozing politico represent- confounding figure for a viewer holding a tions—or, in what feels like Albert Serra cut-
ing the French Republic in this impossibly left–progressive critique of all things colonial. ting loose and hanging ten, a supercool place
beautiful hinterland, marking one of the last In some scenes—especially those in which to surf. As De Roller on a Ski-Doo boat
places on Earth where a colonial-like imposi- he’s frankly contending with a strong, insis- observes a surfing contest, the constant Pacific
tion exists over a place with its own very dif- tent grassroots activist named Matahi curl erupts out of a seemingly placid surface.
ferent cultural forms, customs, and identities. (Matahi Pambrun) or having dutiful meet- This, too, is a new dimension in Serra’s
The complicated political realities of French ings with local officials—De Roller finds him- ever-expanding cinema—pauses in the narra-
Polynesia can be described as a strange self playing the standard Government Man, tive for pure, sensual enjoyment for its own
hybrid system in which the territory is under echoing closely (from an American perspec- sake, reminders of why we live or what we live
the governance of the French Republic, but tive) the position of a standard center-left for, the things that cut through politics, con-
whose citizens elect their own local govern- Democratic pol. And yet, what standard cen- flicts, moralities. This is a cinema that beckons
ing representatives, making it somewhat sim- ter-left Democratic official has a trans lover, the viewer to think—and live—beyond those
ilar to the weird hybrid system in U.S. territo- hangs with the denizens of a bar owned by a things and, possibly, discover new possibili-
ries such as Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. shady-looking expat named Morton ties for the body.—Robert Koehler
56 CINEASTE, Spring 2023
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