Over the past decade or so, the French city of Marseille has worked hard to clean up its image, gentrifying a significant area around its touristy Vieux-Port, opening a brand new museum and conference center — both architectural marvels — and attracting a swatch of young residents, including a growing number of Parisians relocating there for the lower rents, gentler climate and all-around southern comfort.
But you wouldn’t know any of this after watching The Stronghold (BAC Nord), a hard-hitting, down-and-dirty policier that makes the city look at best like a setting for the next Grand Theft Auto, and at worst like a sun-drenched, dystopian hellhole.
Which isn’t to say that born-and-bred Marseillais director Cédric Jimenez doesn’t film his hometown with plenty of passion, capturing its gritty, firecracker vividness and going so far as to document the making of a favorite local delicacy: a lamb kebab slathered with harissa sauce. But the stylized violence and overcooked ambience is so extreme that you wonder if he’s actually doing the city justice, or simply creating a string of sensational set-pieces that will keep viewers glued to the screen.
The film was released in France mid-August, where it has maintained the number one slot at the box office. Netflix has picked it up for the rest of the world and will likely market it as a pure high-octane actioner.
Based on a scandal that broke in 2012, when several officers of the brigade anti-criminalité (or BAC) from the north of Marseille were charged with drug trafficking and other violations, The Stronghold focuses on a trio of cops-turned-cowboys who ride around the rough edges of town like vigilantes parading in and out of Dodge.
Their squad leader, Greg (Gilles Lellouche), is an aging loner who never sits still — the kind of guy who always seems to be chewing gum, even when he’s eating. His underlings are the upstart Antoine (François Civil), whose bleached man-bun epitomizes the motley look of Marseille’s youth, and Yass (Karim Leklou), a family man whose wife, fellow officer Nora (Adèle Exarchopoulos), is about to have a baby.
Jimenez co-wrote the script with regular collaborator Audrey Diwan (the two were behind the director’s 1970s Marseillais crime epic, The Connection, starring Jean Dujardin), and they take great pains during the film’s first half to present the trio as likeable if flawed officers trying to do their job in a ruthless, lawless place — one that continues to make headlines with its drug-related shootings and vendettas.
Indeed, whenever they’re chasing down a suspect, the latter usually winds up escaping to one of the fortress-like cités in the northern districts, where cops are not only unwelcome but basically forbidden entry. In one scene, the three are stopped at the gates by a local kingpin, and after lots of threats and shouting, Greg humiliatingly backs down.
This leads to a decision, approved by Greg’s friend and BAC commander, Jérôme (Cyril Lecomte), to make arrests by any means necessary, including paying off an informant (Kenza Fortas) with hashish stolen from unsuspecting buyers. It seems slightly illegal, and definitely immoral, but if the means lead to a righteous end — in this case, to a big drug bust that makes headlines — then no harm, no foul, right?
The film’s defining set-piece is the bust itself, which takes place in a cité called Castellane — depicted here as a no man’s land that Greg and his forces have to invade like the Allies storming the beaches of Normandy. Working with DP Laurent Tangy (kudos also go to camera operator Marco Graziaplena, who probably set an Olympic record for sprinting with a Steadicam), Jimenez creates a standout action sequence where the tension rises to unbearable levels, especially when the three cops are cornered in an upstairs apartment as they try to get their hands on the dealers’ stash.
From then on it’s pretty much downhill — not only for Greg and his team, who are accused of profiteering and sent to jail; but for the movie itself, which never quite recovers from its midway highpoint. This is in part because the protagonists, despite agressively committed turns from all three leads (Lellouche has never been so hunkered down with perspiration and pathos), serve up the clichés we’ve seen in many a policier. They’re good guys driven bad by the system, which is a tad too simplistic in an epoch when cops have been shown capable of awful things.
More problematic, though, is Jimenez’ decision to shoot the action from their point-of-view alone, which means that nearly everyone else in the film comes across as an enemy, especially the fired-up, trash-talking kids that Greg’s squad runs up against. Unlike the somewhat comparable Les Misérables, which uses multiple viewpoints to reveal the conflicted world of Paris’ suburbs, The Stronghold constantly pits its badge-toting heroes against the teeming masses threatening their lives. The result is that Marseille itself becomes a mere background for the tragedy of a select few — whereas the tragedy of the city itself, despite all the recent efforts to save it, is largely forgotten.
Director: Cédric Jimenez
Screenplay: Cédric Jimenez, Audrey Diwan, with the collaboration of Benjamin Charbit
Cast: Gilles Lellouche, Karim Leklou, François Civil, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Cyril Lecomte, Kenza Fortas
Producers: Hugo Sélignac, Vincent Mazel
Cinematography: Laurent Tangy
Production design: Jean-Philippe Moreaux
Costume design: Stéphanie Watrigant
Editing: Simon Jacquet
Music: Guillaume Roussel
Sound: Cédric Deloche, Jean-Michel Tressalet
Production companies: Chi-Fou-Mi Productions (France)
World sales: StudioCanal
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Première)
In French
104 minutes
