Review by © Jane Freebury
A sensitive young
soldier, an artist in civilian life, is wounded at the front during the final
hours of war. It is a cruel irony that hostilities are officially over, and
that the incident during which he sustains his devastating wound is engineered
by a commanding officer who doesn’t want the fighting to stop.
The soldier,
Edouard Pericourt (Nahuel Perez Biscayart), was one of many thousands of
demobbed soldiers who returned home to find they were good for nothing. Yet with
acerbic wit style and humour, See You Up
There reflects on the cost on a generation of young lives lost or destroyed
by the war that was supposed to end all wars, World War I.
The book that the
film is based on is only recent. Au Revoir La-Haut won its author, Pierre Lemaitre, the
prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2015. With
participation by Lemaitre, it has been adapted for the screen, by the
marvellously talented Albert Dupontel, who also directs. As Albert Maillard,
the narrator, he is in the key role of former bookkeeper who cares for Edouard
after they return to civilian life.
On the
battlefield, Edouard had saved Maillard’s life by hauling him out of a bomb
crater. In the same instant the young man is hit by mortar and his own life ruined
when his lower jaw is blown away. This eventually leads him to fake his own
death.
When the two men
return to Paris, joining hordes of returned soldiers, wounded, disabled and
deranged, French society does not seem to know what to do with them. Plus ca change? After months of
disillusionment trying to make an honest living, Maillard agrees to become
Edouard’s business partner on a daring swindle. As dull foil to the Edouard’s
mercurial brilliance, he is also staunch friend, and a father figure.
Edouard’s real
father, Marcel (Niels Arestrup), is a beastly capitalist who had no time for
his son’s artistic leanings. In the novel, Edouard was also gay, something the
film has chosen to elide.
It just isn’t
possible for Edouard to wear the grotesque mandible he has been issued with, so
he creates beautiful masks, from the flamboyant to the minimalist, to express
himself. He retreats from the world, behind elaborate creations that hide his
disfigurement, and his despair.
The young
Argentine actor, Biscayart, is wonderful as a man who can only communicate with
the expression in his eyes and gestures. It is as though he is the sole silent
actor working in a sound medium.
Although Edouard
cannot bear to face his family again, his lovely sister is determined to find
out about the circumstances of his ‘death’. This leads to revelations about her
marriage to Pradelle (Laurent Lafitte), of all people. Pradelle is the very
lieutenant who, in a fit of spite when he heard the unwelcome order to lay down
arms, organised a ruse that sent his men, including Edouard and Albert, over
the top.
While dad is the
subject of his son’s satiric drawings, a ‘gros con’, it is Pradelle, decked out
in a bit, black vaudevillian moustache, who looks precisely like what he is. The
out-and-out villain, the only character who is irredeemable and egregiously
evil
See You Up There is bookended by scenes in Morocco, postwar. Here and
elsewhere, the action is captured with terrific cinematography.
The early war
scenes, beginning during an eerie lull when everyone is exhausted and fed up
with fighting, we are told, even the German troops. A messenger dog runs across
the deserted battleground, a sequence that is as contemplative and suspenseful an
introduction to war as you could imagine.
This elegant film
with its eloquent anti-war message is very accomplished in many ways. Ravishing
to look at, by turns bleak and cynical but entertaining, it will find resonances
for many in the mood of our own difficult age.
4.5 Stars
Also published on Jane's blog
See You Up There is screening in Canberra at Dendy and Palace Electric cinemas
