It’s like a war, all against all, says filmmaker Robert Guédiguian of French society today. His new film, “Gloria Mundi – Return to Marseille”, is sadder and colder than the twenty he has made so far, a family story that tightens like a vice, mishap after mishap – a couple of parents, two daughters with their husbands, and the film begins with the birth of a grandchild, that is Gloria, the name of the parents from a film they saw on television.
Robert Guédiguian is filming again in Marseille, across the whole city, the port, where the tents of the refugees are now, the modern office buildings, old apartment buildings and narrow hotels, on the stairs and under the overpasses. Again and again you see soldiers on the sidewalks and across the streets among passers-by, carbines in hand. Ariane Ascaride – the director’s wife – is the mother Sylvie, she received the award for best female actress at the Venice Film Festival. She works for a cleaning company, it’s – you can’t call it any other way – a shitty job. The other workers want to strike for better pay, she is reluctant. You think, she sighs, it’s May 68 again …
This time, many critics were dissatisfied with Guédiguian’s narrative, which was a schematic tragic colportage. Guédiguian’s films are socially critical, but his realism is that of the fairy tale, evoking the past. Once upon a time there was May 68 … There is another man in Sylvie’s life, Daniel, who is Gloria’s actual grandfather. He was imprisoned in Rennes for many years, had killed another. When he returned to Marseilles, he stayed in a hotel, at night he sat at the table, took out a notebook and wrote: The whole world is asleep. Nothing between the night and me … then he crosses out the night and writes moon for it. Little haikus to hold onto the memories. He likes to go for a walk with his little granddaughter Gloria. I tell her all the stories, he says to her mother Mathilda, that I never told you.
Only cash, please, society works according to this principle
A film about a society that is getting closer and closer and functions more and more radically according to capitalist rules. Sylvie’s daughter Mathilda works as a saleswoman in a boutique and knows that she will be fired before her probationary period is over and replaced by a cheap worker from abroad. Her husband Nicolas is trying to become self-employed as an Uber driver, and a couple of taxi drivers break the competitor’s arm for it. From May 68, Guédiguian retained that magical basic feeling of solidarity that permeates this film. “I have this idea of transcendence in my head,” says the filmmaker, “I know about the people who lived before us and I have an idea of what is sacred, what the myths and legends are and how important they can be in our life.”
“Tout Cash” is the principle on which this company functions. “Tout Cash” is the name of the second-hand shop that Sylvie’s other daughter Aurore and her husband Bruno run, all bar. People bring things they no longer need, and Aurore and Bruno give out ridiculously small amounts of money, blatantly and impudently. Sylvie works at night, that is better paid, cleaning hospitals and ship cabins, and when Daniel once had to go to jail, she was also a night worker on the streets where everything was tout cash to help her daughter through … one of the haikus is: death pursues us. Life catches up with us. For a time.
Once a woman, veiled in a hijab, comes to the “Tout Cash”, she brings a toaster. I have to see your ID, says Aurore, and when the woman takes it out: What should I do with it, I can’t see if it’s you … The veil has to come down, with careful, shameful movements the woman finally follows. Aurore looks, fascinated, lustful, a moment that is typical of Robert Guédiguian’s films, heartbreaking and Brechtian: this is how you are even prettier.
Gloria Mundi, 2019 – Director: Robert Guédiguian. Book: Serge Valletti, Guédiguian. Camera: Pierre Milon. Editor: Bernard Sasia. Music: Michel Petrossian. With: Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Gérard Meylan, Anaïs Demoustier, Robinson Stévenin, Lola Naymark, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet. Film cinema text, 107 minutes. Theatrical release: 01/13/2021