They wander through nocturnal Paris like two ghosts. A sallow-faced young couple, wrapped in thermal foil that glitters gold in the city light, staggers and holds on to each other. A poetic moment. But the rescue blankets refer to the horror of the past few hours, they fly in the autumn wind and still seem to be very heavy. They carry the couple from one reality to a new one – before and after November 13, 2015.
Is this really happening right now? what happened anyway You can read the questions on the two faces. Anyone who sees this in the cinema already knows the answer: it is the night of the terrorist attacks in the Paris nightlife district between Bastille and Place de la République. The attack in the Bataclan concert hall kills 89 people and injures hundreds.
The two remain unharmed, but do not come to rest
Isaki Lacuesta’s sensitive, fragmentary drama “Peace, Love and Death Metal” picks up where the real horror has just ended. The Spanish director tells of the long, psychologically complex odyssey of this wandering couple, brilliantly played by Noémie Merlant and Nahuel Pérez-Biscayart. Céline and Ramón, she French, he Spanish, remain physically unharmed after the evening, but they don’t get any rest.
The film is an adaptation of the autobiographical account of the same name by survivor Ramón González. The German title of the film and that of the original book refers to the rock band that performed at the Bataclan that evening: “Peace, Love, Death Metal” was the name of the first album Eagles of Death Metal. The original Spanish title actually fits the film better: “Un año, una noche” – one year, one night. Because the shock runs deep. And doesn’t want to leave the lives of Céline and Ramón for a long time.
It’s a film about terror after terror, the terror that lasts when the rest of the world moves on. The camera is close to the two main characters. It shows the disturbance and repression, shows panic attacks and routine compulsion, alcohol intoxication, gallows humor and desperate attempts to find your way back to life. And she shows how different trauma management can look like: Céline acts as if nothing had happened – don’t think, just keep going. Ramón, on the other hand, wants to understand everything exactly. He’s obsessively trying to recall every detail of that night, not knowing what to do with it all. During sleepless nights he makes escape plans to places he has never been. In a touching scene, he sits in a psychotherapeutic consultation with dark circles under his eyes and tells how he constantly goes through everything: “What happened? What not? What could I have done? I’m extremely afraid of forgetting something. The people next to me open the dance floor. Or the bartenders.”
The scenes remain fragments of mourning
“Peace, Love and Death Metal” is already the third film this fall to deal with the attacks of that day, following Cédric Jimenez’ “November” and Kilian Riedhof’s “Meinen Hass ihr nicht.” Jimenez takes a cool and sober look at the case in a thriller about the work of the investigating security authorities. Riedhof’s drama is always on the verge of sentimentality, it illuminates the grief of the real survivor Antoine Leiris, who loses his wife and the mother of his son in the Bataclan: He became known through a Facebook post in which he addressed the perpetrators. Just like Lacuesta now with “Peace, Love and Death Metal”, Riedhof devoted himself less to the attack itself and more to coming to terms with it, but also addressed the social furor between fear, defiance and anger much more. In the case of Lacuesta, this debate only occurs marginally once: when, during a drinking night out with friends, Antoine Leiris’ Facebook post is just that.
What Lacuesta wants to show is the painful process, the ups and downs, the internal wear and tear and the resulting cracks in the couple’s relationship. He does this in haunting scenes, which always remain just fragments of the trauma work. The protagonists are never fully explained in their actions and emotions. In their own experience, both remain isolated, Céline, who pushes everything away, and Ramón, who wants to bring everything closer. From the outside you can only sympathize, not empathize.
Lacuesta talks about the psychosocial consequences of the terrorist attack. The attack itself, what happened in the evening, only occurs in fragmentary passages. It remains unclear whether they are flashbacks, what is distorted memory and what is a nightmare. Basically, it’s not a film about the attack in the Bataclan – but about the unpredictability of trauma. And the vulnerability of the human soul.
Peace, Love and Death Metal, Spain/France 2022 – Director: Isaki Lacuesta. Book: Fran Araújo, Isa Campo, Isaki Lacuesta. Camera: Irina Lubtchansky. With: Noémie Merlant, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart: Ramón, Quim Gutiérrez, Alba Guilera. Studio Studio Canal, 130 minutes. Theatrical release: December 15, 2022.