Marie-Line (2000)
Directed by Mehdi Charef

Film Review

Algerian-born filmmaker Mehdi Charef scored a notable critical success in 1985 with Le Thé au harem d'Archimède, adapted from an acclaimed first novel which he penned two years earlier.  He went on to direct several other worthy films in a similar trenchantly realist vein, Marie-Line being, arguably, one of the most timely and moving.  It is a film that deals with  a subject which, at the time (the late 1990s), was only just beginning to gain traction in France as a major social concern - the exploitation of illegal immigrants by an unscrupulous money-oriented commercial system.  The film failed to attract the audience that it merited (had it been made just a few years later it would have had a much greater impact), but some critics were fulsome in their praise for what is assuredly one of the most pertinent films of the decade.

The film's main asset is Muriel Robin, whose portrayal of the highly conflicted and doggedly ordinary Marie-Line is astonishingly authentic, and a career highpoint for an actress who is now, sadly, more closely associated with misfire comedies such as Les Couloirs du temps: Les visiteurs II (1998).  Marie-Line is not the kind of individual a cinema audience (even a French one) would naturally sympathise with.  She is abrasive, self-absorbed and overtly racist (at least when we first meet her).  Yet, as she is drawn into the precarious world of her co-workers in a supermarket (which increasingly resembles a brutal labour camp), as she gradually changes both her outlook and her behaviour towards others, we cannot help but warm to her.  It is the kind of transformation that we would like to see in society as a whole - a willingness to see immigrants not as mere drudges to be exploited and abused, but as human beings that we need to engage with and help.

Despite the film's relentlessly realist approach, it has an upbeat message which asserts that change for the better - in both individuals and society - is always possible.  Charef deals with the central themes of racial intolerance and social exclusion with unswerving honesty, but also with considerable compassion.  There are a few stand-out scenes which have a colossal impact and which stay with you long afterwards.  Of these, the most powerful is the harrowing sequence depicting a traumatic birth in a locked elevator,  Marie-Line was perhaps too in-your-face, too pro-immigrant to garner much interest when it was first seen, but today (at a time when extreme rightwing sentiment is spreading across the world like an all-consuming wild fire) it feels staggeringly relevant.  This is truly a film for our time.

Film Synopsis

Marie-Line is a down-to-earth woman in her mid-forties who works hard for a living whilst she copes, as best she can, with a failing marriage.  She works for a large out-of-town supermarket, running a team of cleaners.  Because of budgetary constraints, the latter comprise mainly illegal immigrants, who are so desperate for cash that they are unlikely to cause any trouble or object to the harsh conditions under which they have to work.  Marie-Line is not naturally someone who has ever sympathised with exploited immigrants in the past.  Her politics have always been towards the far right and she has had little truck with socialist and humanitarian concerns.  But as she gets to know her hardworking team of cleaners, as she becomes familiar with their fraught personal lives and intimate tragedies, she begins to develop a kindly understanding, even fondness for them.  This growing rapprochement has a positive impact on the hitherto tough and uncompromising Marie-Line.  She is motivated to do eveything within her power to help her co-workers, even if it means placing her own job on the line...