Scene from Le Brio
HOLLYWOOD, CA (LA ELEMENTS) 4/29/2018 -“I am super-moved to be here,” says actress Camélia Jordana, co-star of Le Brio. “Actually, this is my first role in a movie and it’s pretty crazy to be here in front of you to present it. I just was dreaming about this kind of situation since I was a kid.”
Jordana made her remarks after the screening of Le Brio, before a capacity crowd inside the Renoir Theater at the Directors Guild of America, site of the 2018 COLCOA French Film Festival. The COLCOA French Film Festival was created by the Franco-American Cultural Fund and offers a week of French film and series premieres as well as panel discussions with their artists and executives. This year, a record breaking 86 movie, television series, digital series and even virtual reality programs are taking part in the film festival.
Le Brio was certainly one of the more provocative entries to COLCOA. Starring in the movie is Daniel Auteuil as law professor Pierre Mazard, and Camélia Jordana as his student, Neila Salah. Neila is a French girl of Arab descent who lives with her mother and grandmother in a housing project outside of Paris in Crétiel. She dreams of becoming a lawyer and is a student at the top law school in France, Pantheón-Assas. Unfortunately, she has the bad luck of being late on her first day of class and quickly becomes a target of the notorious Mazard’s insults. Insults, which veer dangerously close to being flat out racist in their insinuations. The entire incident is recorded on the cell phones of many of the students in class and has the potential to embroil the elite university in scandal. Eager to avoid this fate, the law school’s president decides that the best solution would be for Professor Mazard to train Neila for the prestigious concours Eloquentia, rhetoric competition, therefore, “proving” that he is not racist.
Although this outcome might appear to be improbable, it works. It works because both characters, never compromise who they are while undertaking their journey together. Mazard continues to make his patronizing comments to Neila (at one point, referring to her as “Fatima,” when he so obviously knows her name) and Neila does not hide her disgust with her teacher and calls him on it when she feels he is going to far with his insults. It also works because in the hands of Daniel Auteuil and Camelia Jordana, Pierre Mazard and Neila Salah are so much more than the first impressions that they created. Despite her intelligence and swagger, deep inside, Jordana’s Neila fears that she doesn’t really belong in such an acclaimed institution where pretty much everyone is well-to-do… and white. Indeed, the worst indignities don’t come from Mazard. Instead, it’s other instances that appear to justify Neila’s self-doubt such as the harrowing racist onslaught at the hands of a fellow student during the competition. An attack that takes everyone including Mazard by surprise, and leaves Neila near tears with shaking hands and trembling voice as she struggles to complete the round.
Daniel Auteuil as Professor Pierre Mazard.
Then there is Auteuil’s Pierre Mazard himself. One reason why Mazard is so deft and insightful with his provocations, is his mastery of the writings of Rabelais, Nietzsche and especially Arthur Schopenhauer whose “The Art of Being Right” reveals 38 strategies to win a debate. It is that collective of writings which he drills into Neila so that she might have the tools to actually win the competition.
Mazard’s total dedication to his work of which provocation and debate are a cornerstone, appears to have come at a huge price. At the end of the day, there is no family for Mazard to go home to. During the Q and A portion of the screening Jordana noted, “During promotion in France, it was funny to see how a huge majority of people who had seen the movie thought that he was a huge racist. But actually, I don’t think he is at all, not a second. And the funny thing is, the first time when we meet each other, there’s not one word that he addresses to me which is racist, actually. He says, “typical” and what is funny is that it is the audience who reacts, but he didn’t say anything at this moment and he plays with that only because he’s like alone, sad, super intelligent, super isolated and that’s his game. That’s his favorite game. He’s just enjoying it. He just wants to make this show every year with a new student who finally becomes a partner into it.”
Yet, that doesn’t mean that Mazard, who is so witty and quick with a cutting remark, doesn’t himself yearn for something more. This is powerfully exemplified in Le Brio when he reads a love poem filled with erotic imagery during a class lecture. He does so as a means to illustrate that speaking with sincerity and gravitas give words their power and in turn, make the speaker powerful as well. This moment turns out to be an especially poignant lesson in “eloquence, rhetoric, the art of speaking.” Indeed, there was something incredibly powerful about watching this man who was no longer in the prime of his life, standing alone on the dais of the lecture hall in front of people who are, and recite the poem with so much reverence for the spoken word and so much unmistakable longing in his voice. The scene plays out almost like it’s own movie and you simply cannot look away.
The impact of this film doesn’t come within its final scenes, but in its journey to that moment. A journey taken by two isolated people who manage to find each other. One isolated by issues of class and race and the other isolated by the wall he has built perhaps unknowingly, around himself.
As Jordana noted, “I think it is definitely a universal subject, the fact that people have actually to make an effort to meet each other. Even if it’s not prioritizing, at the end you can actually realize that you need this person to grow up. This is what happened for both of them, I think.”
Direcotor Yvan Avital with actress Camelia Jordana
You can view the trailer to Le Brio right here.
Production company: Pathe Production
Director: Yvan Attal
All photos courtesy of The Mesulam Group.
The 2018 COLCOA French Film Festival is running from April 23-30. For more information please visit their site.
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