Conceived in the wake of the 2015-2016 wave of ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks across Europe, Alain Guiraudie’s Nobody’s Hero takes an equally comedic and sobering look at French attitudes toward immigrants and ethnic minorities. Médéric Roman (Jean-Charles Clichet), who’s not cold hearted but whom no one would count as a hero, both represents an unflattering proxy for a bewildered French nation and stands within a tradition of farcical mockery of the pretensions and peccadillos of the petit bourgeoisie.
Set in the central French city of Clermont-Ferrand, the story concerns the wave of paranoia provoked by a terrorist attack in a local plaza. Above all, Guiraudie focuses on the conflicted and evolving attitude of Clichet’s mild-mannered computer programmer toward Sélim (Ilies Kadri), a homeless Arab youth who shows up in his neighborhood soon after the attack.
Médéric’s response to Sélim’s request for shelter is the very definition of ambivalent: He lets the young man into his building and gives him dry clothing but then calls the police because he notices a resemblance between Sélim and a police sketch of one of the attackers. Later, he lets Sélim into his apartment, only to use his coding skills to hack into the kid’s email for evidence of radicalization. Soon, everyone in Médéric’s building seems to be involving themselves in determining what’s to be done with Sélim, speaking presumptively and patronizingly about how to keep him away from becoming a jihadist—if he isn’t already one.
To Médéric, though, the suspicious Arab teenager sleeping on his couch isn’t even his main problem. He’s also begun an affair with Isadora (Noémie Lvovsky), a local sex worker whose jealous husband (Renaud Rutten) keeps interceding as they attempt to consummate their somewhat befuddling mutual attraction, most notably in an extended, graphic early scene in a hotel room that ends with a particularly awkward instance of coitus interruptus.
The crises generated by these two lines of action cascade and converge in a series of scenes that, in true farcical fashion, brings the various caricatures and recurring gags together in the domestic sphere of Médéric’s apartment building. It’s an unassuming space that becomes ground zero of the conflicts, contradictions, and ambiguities rending French society.
Nobody’s Hero goes from biting satire to broad farce and back as Guiraudie fills it with both social observation and ludicrous incident. The result isn’t exactly a trenchant analysis of the origins of prejudice, or of Arab people’s place in France, but it’s an effective reminder that the motives of the concerned citizen are often infused with petty desires rather than noble ideals. The film’s humor won’t blow anybody’s mind, but maybe raising some eyebrows is a start.
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