On the surface, Albert Serra’s latest film resembles a departure of sorts. Having made his name on the film festival circuit with slow-burning period pieces about grandstanding egoists – Don Quixote, Casanova, Louis XIV – the Spanish auteur’s latest is set in the modern day, and one that’s filled with twists and turns and literally nuclear-powered conspiracies ahoy.
Belying the presence of a more evident narrative, Pacifiction remains similar to Serra’s previous films about delusional men in their literal or metaphorical death throes. Here, this individual takes the shape of a French official whose grip on power in a Pacific archipelago is slowly chiseled away by discontented locals, mysterious foreigners and even his own compatriots.
Buoyed by a nuanced performance from bona fide A-lister Benoît Magimel (The Piano Teacher) and drawing from conventional genres like film noir, Pacifiction is undoubtedly Serra’s most accessible film to date, with his final and long deserved promotion to the top tier of arthouse cinema now cemented by the film’s selection for the main competition at Cannes.
Still, it stays true to the qualities which has established Serra’s credentials: it’s a nuanced character study oozing sumptuous mise-en-scène and simmering tension, a Conradian tale which delves into the heart of human darkness and emerges as a jewel of a film. With its plot somehow in sync with the recent geopolitical tussles for power in the Pacific, Pacifiction is poised to eclipse The Death of Louis XIV in its travels and marketability.
At the center is De Roller (Magimel), the high commissioner of French Polynesia and Paris’ top-ranking representative to this autonomous Pacific archipelago. The modern-day equivalent of a colonial-era governor, the career bureaucrat lives up to his name by rolling along with all the different forces in society. Proclaiming “there are no enemies” in French Polynesia, he spends his time pressing flesh and resolving rows with a mix of manipulation and coercion, cynical about consolidating his quasi-colonial gain.
Here, Serra has refashioned his fictional Tahiti into some kind of a 21st century Chinatown-cum-Casablanca of the Pacific, with Magimel, dressed throughout the film in a cream-coloured suit, delivering an excellent performance that updates Jake Gittes and Rick Blaine to great effect. While De Roller travels far and wide to inspect his realm during the day – he could be glad-handing the European elite one day by introducing them to visiting French intelligentsia, and flying to far-flung outposts the next to get the support of local chieftains – the place the real business occurs is at his favourite nightspot, wheeling and dealing and collecting intel with the help of his trans sidekick Shannah (Pahoa Magafafanau).
It’s through these nightly conversations that De Roller hears of rumours of the resumption of French nuclear tests in Polynesia, a scenario made more palpable with the arrival of a French admiral (Marc Susini), a shady American who only identifies himself as “Mr. Mike” (Mike Landscape) and a tourist known as “the Portuguese” (Alexandre Mello). Already peeved about not being informed about these plans, De Roller sees his authority further undermined when a young community leader (Matahi Pambrun), whom De Roller has always treated as a local proxy, demands the French authorities stand back as he mobilizes locals for protests.
From here onwards, De Roller’s diplomatic mask begins to slip. Failing to uncover some of the strange shenanigans unfolding in his watch (why are young women going on night-time boat trips?), he becomes increasingly belligerent as he rages against the dying of his light. Which, of course, is a sign of his delusions of grandeur, as he’s just a representative of the state who could easily be circumvented or disposed of by the powers that be when necessary. But De Roller’s struggle is even more subtle and minimalist than that of the Sun King’s in the director’s 2016 film The Death of Louis XIV. The screenplay is laced with lines which hint at rather than explain all the geopolitical implosion and its implications, but much is also down to Magimel’s magisterial performance as a morally ambiguous politician whose lizard-like charm conceals a modern-day Machiavelli.
As the menace and mystery grows, the visual style of Pacifiction changes. Working with his long-running DP Artur Tort, Serra begins the film with the kind of gritty texture and widescreen vistas favoured by Alan J. Pakula in his paranoia-fueled political thrillers of the 1970s. De Roller frequently appears as a small and lonesome figure on screen, a visual shorthand of his position as a pawn in a bigger game he has no control of. But as the film progresses, his anxiety is channeled into more visceral images, culminating in a a surreal ending which echoes the original title of the film, “Torment on the islands”.
Director-screenwriter: Albert Serra
Cast: Beno Magimel, Pahoa Magafafanau, Marc Susini, Matahi Pambrun
Producers: Pierre-Olivier, Bardet, Albert Serra, Montse Triola, Dirk Decker, Andrea Schütte, Joaquim Sapinho, Marta Alves, Laurent Jacquemin
Executive producers: Laurent Jacquemin, Elisabeth Pawlowski, Montse Triola
Director of photography: Artur Tort
Editor: Albert Serra, Artur Tort, Ariadna Ribas,
Production designer: Sebastian Vogler
Music composer: Marc Verdaguer
Sound designer: Jordi Ribas
Production companies: Idéale Audience Group, Andergraun Films, Rosa Filmes, Tamtam Film
World sales: Films Boutique
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
In French
163 minutes
