July Delpy kills four birds with one stone for her new film Les Barbares [bande-annonce]

The French director returns to the big screen and introduces us to her characters in a series of incisive teasers.

After devoting herself to the series On the Verge for Canal + and Netflix, Julie Delpy settles in the pretty village of Paimpont, in the heart of Brittany to The Barbarianswhich has been making its return to theaters since 2019 and the release of My Zoe with Richard Armitage And Daniel Brühl. According to the synopsis of this new film, the plot of which unfolds behind the pretext of filming a report:

“In Paimpont, harmony reigns. […] In a great surge of solidarity, [les habitants] enthusiastically agree to vote for welcoming Ukrainian refugees. Except that the refugees who arrive are not Ukrainian… but Syrian! And some, in this charming little Breton village, do not view the arrival of their new neighbors very favorably. So, at the end of the day, who are the barbarians?”

In her eighth feature film, France's most American director and actress places herself in the middle of a group of actors as colorful as their characters. Among them, Sandrine Kiberlain And Laurent Lafittebut also Mathieu Demy, Jean-Charles Clichet (Elementary Particles), India Hair (Mandibles), Ziad Bakri (The translator), Albert Delpy (the director’s father) or even Marc Fraize (Antoinette in the Cévennes).

It seems that in France, the fashion is for original trailers (we remember that of Second Act of Dupieux) because to present her film, Julie Delpy has concocted four brief teasers for us, the first, quite classic, presenting the plot from the point of view of the village of Paimpont:

Another looks at the character of Sandrine Kiberlain, Anne, married to the local grocer (Mathieu Demy) and “focused on the aperitif” as the synopsis states:

Yet another, shows Laurent Lafitte in the role of Hervé, “the Alsatian plumber more Breton than the Bretons”chauvinistic misogynist and a little fascist around the edges:

A final video shows Julie Delpy as Jöelle, “the teacher giving lessons”feminist know-it-all and fifty-year-old progressive on the verge of a nervous breakdown:

Four spots that say a lot about the absurd and politicized universe that Julie Delpy wanted to deploy in The Barbariansa film which, just like The Skylabevokes a deep social divide, but this time through the theme of immigration. “It is clear that the current climate is not the most serene. […] “Humans are on a downward slope.”, declares the director. However, The Barbarians has no moralizing aim:

“I don’t like films that hammer the point home, that hit you on the head. It was essential to keep each character’s humanity, even the most caricatured ones, not to make them unbearable characters but to show the reality of people who react out of fear. My character, Joëlle, says it at one point: 'It's fear, fear of others, fear that we'll take something from them, even if we don't take it from them, fear that we'll take it from them'.”

Would this film carry a message of hope? “After the storm comes the good weatherdreams Julie Delpy. It's just going to take a long time, unfortunately, so we have to stay vigilant.”

She also specifies that The Barbarians is not a film with a message, it is a film that “just try to be honest about a current situation that should neither be minimized nor demonized.”

Julie Delpy's latest film will be released in theaters on September 18.

Denis Podalydès and Sandrine Kiberlain rob Daniel Auteuil in the trailer for La Petite Vadrouille