Philippe Lioret
Welcome

When I found a lesson boring, I thought about other things, and when I didn't even feel like thinking about anything else, I tried to kill time by writing the seconds in my notebook. 10, 20, 30, etc... If you want to make 5 innocent minutes immortal, divide them into 300 stoic and warlike seconds. They will never pass. Guaranteed.

A faint, dry, and regular noise in the absolute silence of a container a few hundred seconds from death and dozens of meters from salvation. An oppressive noise full of determination, fear, and unyielding will that, in the case of Bilal, is called love for a girl he wants, he must, reach. He can't make it. Too many terrible memories of the recent past. He frantically takes off that plastic sarcophagus and, risking a lynching among the other desperate people, is discovered by the harbor police. England becomes a mirage and that stretch of sea, the English Channel, an apparently impenetrable barrier.

Sad gaze in a silent house that is about to become tremendously empty without her. In that gaze, a mix between a tumbleweed rolling in the desert, boiled fish with its mouth open searching for air, he seems not to want to understand why she left even though the answer is clear and Simon knows it well. The chance meeting between him, the former swimming champion in crisis, and young Bilal is a light breath on the ashes of a fireplace. Those gray ashes still harbor a glimmer of warmth, and by doing so, he awakens from the stupor into which he had fallen, which had effectively driven his wife away. He unconsciously trusts a complete stranger; a sincere friendship is born, and he tries to lend a hand to the boy to realize that crazy idea of learning to swim to face the waves of the English Channel and its icy and fearsome currents. He feels ashamed while training him: he couldn't keep his wife for trivial reasons and sees the determination he has always lacked in life in those furious strokes in the pool. By night, by day.

A full noise: fearful and sweet lapping in the immensity of the sea, dozens of kilometers from salvation while the camera inexorably rises, making our stomachs tighten.

“Welcome” is a film of rare beauty that hits hard, criticizing without ifs and buts the new immigration law desired by the Sarkozy government which provides for very heavy penalties for French citizens who help illegal immigrants. Calais is one of those border cities that, by necessity, must coexist with the problem related to integration with foreigners and director Lioret finds space to set a strong, bitter, realistic, and deep story well interpreted by a few, deeply drawn actors.

The moral is not kindly: we don't have to become an army of Simon and not all immigrants are innocent and romantic Bilals. But, damn it, perhaps we also shouldn't become racists who generalize without knowing and who believe they have a clear conscience by prominently displaying a doormat with the colossal word “Welcome”.

Ilfreddo