Poetical Refugee

Jallel arrives in France from Tunisia without papers. To stay he invents a story of political asylum, works a fruit stall, sleeps in a hostel for the homeless, and builds a fragile life with the people he meets there: Nassera, a single mother, and Lucie, who is unwell. The film is not interested in immigration politics. It is interested in the daily arithmetic of living without papers. Jallel constantly has to lean on someone, and every relationship is affection and calculation at once; the film does not separate the two. The form is loose and observational. The camera wanders through crowded rooms and scenes get cut before they finish. It is Abdellatif Kechiche's first film as a director, and it won the Luigi De Laurentiis award for best first film at Venice in 2000. Everything that will feel familiar in his later work, the long tables and the overlapping talk, starts here. Sami Bouajila plays Jallel and Élodie Bouchez plays Lucie. Who it is for: viewers drawn to French social realism, migration stories, and the beginning of Kechiche. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a clear ending. The film does not rescue its hero and leaves its situations unresolved.