The place is empty – Weekend
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“King of the Streets” was released in Russia, a tragicomedy shown at Cannes about the ordeals of Parisian gangsters who faced difficulties typical of the first year of emigration: nowhere to go, no one to call, it’s scary to return, and they will definitely be condemned.
Omar (Reda Kateb) got the nickname Strawberry after he took revenge on a strict teacher in a completely Jesuit way in early childhood – he gave a basket of ripe berries, each of which was stuffed with needles, as an apology – for which he served a youngster, then leaned back, then grew up , became a prominent gangster, half of the thieves’ life went through and ended up in a sunny paradise. In Algeria, on the shores of the blue sea, on the terrace of a luxurious Florentine-style villa, in the company of a faithful accomplice Roger (Benoit Magimel) with the prophetic surname Ermit – these two hermits will live. It would seem – sunbathe and smoke dope. But not willingly, Omar enjoys far niente. The last robbery had cost him Paris, and he and Roger had left their beloved slums of Saint-Denis hastily and under cover of darkness. Now Omar faces twenty years without the right to pardon, but twenty years in a hot foreign land is not much better than prison in the eyes of an exile. Roger, knowing by heart the sensitive soul of a friend, his attachment to the Parisian art de vivre – at night gop-stop, the rest of the time hip-hop and several Michelin stars – followed Omar into forced emigration. To console and entertain, to patronize and indulge the strongest longing – nostalgia for the land, which for some reason is called homeland.
The dashing debut of Elias Belkeddar’s “King of the Streets”, although it tries to deceive the viewer and pretend to be another handicraft replica of the work of Quentin Tarantino and other classics of postmodernism (chases are side by side with runs, blood is like water, and the soundtrack is more important than synopsis), in fact, it is deeply lyrical and almost philosophical reasoning on a topic that is close and understandable to many today. Exodus, flight, movement in space, emigration – no matter how you call this movement outward, leading to a dead end inside, it will not become easier. Was and gone. Where he was born – did not come in handy. Wherever he went, he disappeared. Not missing, but without a chance for an afterword.
“King of the Streets” is about how life and how it can’t be in a foreign land to a person whose only thoughts are about the past: about a house that is closed somewhere, about people who are already busy with their fuss without him, pretending that they forgot almost immediately those who were lost on the map of the world. Everything continues for them, time rushes forward for them, and for those who left the distant shores, it took a pause, froze – if not forever, then for an indefinite period.
An endless return to where it was not that happy once. A stubborn desire for a denouement that will never come. A protracted wait by the sea or at the window into the courtyard – news that no longer has anything to do with you and therefore should not torment you, but still eat it. These are the emotions that Omar can’t get away from. And after all, everyone around is talking to him – you are ours, you are an Algerian by blood, reunite with the land of your ancestors, find a place for yourself. But the place is empty. It’s like a swimming pool that has become sore to the eyes, which the lazy workers, accustomed to living until dawn, and not until payday, will never fill. Omar’s suffering is reminiscent of the pretentious throwing of damned poets who rejected civilization for the sake of true sensations, and the metaphysical flight of David Locke from Profession: Reporter, who changed both his passport and the sky above his head, but did not hide from himself, and the boredom of Ray and Ken lying on the bottom in popular print Bruges.
“King of the Streets” in a sense also echoes the painting by Maiwenn “DNA” about the search for the future in the scraps of the past. But if Maiwenn, who directed the sentimental autobiographical melodrama, was a firm believer in genetics and a cultural code that cannot be beaten out by assimilation, Omar in “King of the Streets” does not even try to hunt ghosts. This séance is a complete scam, a well-known tourist scam.
And so the winds will continue to blow, driving sand and decadent thoughts through the rooms of the mansion, where the meaning of being no longer spends the night. Where any thing seems to be evidence, proof that everything has passed, everything is over, there is no turning back. Omar could turn around for the very last time – after all, Paris is intact, which cannot be said about his life.
In theaters from July 20
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