Dernier étage, gauche, gauche (2010)
Directed by Angelo Cianci

Film Review

The tragicomic absurdity of the rampant anti-Islamist paranoia that the West has laughably succumbed to over the past decade is brought home with a vengeance in this scattergun satire, a promising opening salvo from first-time director Angelo Cianci.  Dernier étage, gauche, gauche (a.k.a. Top Floor Left Wing) is crude to the point of being almost fatuous but it serves as an effective reminder of the state of febrile tension that has taken hold of Europe and the United States since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001.  There was a time when the plot would have been considered ridiculously far fetched.  Now, it is all to easy to believe that a simple misunderstanding between a bailiff, an indebted immigrant and his drugs peddling son can end up being misread by the media and the police as the prelude to a major terrorist incident.

Pertinent the film may be but it hardly does justice to its subject.  Cianci's screenplay is as cliché-sodden and unimaginative as his mise-en-scène.  The humour is laboured and opportunities for good laughs carelessly missed.  Neither are the characters particularly well-drawn, all seeming to be outright caricatures with little in the way of charm, depth or any interest value at all.  They are merely robots mechanically servicing a clockwork narrative.  This is not to negate the quality of the performances. The three capable leads - Hippolyte Girardot (Un monde sans pitié), Mohamed Fellag and Aymen Saïdi - all make the most of the material they are given and had more care gone into the script the result would doubtless have been a solid satire with a suitably tough social realist edge to it.  Alas, despite being motivated by what were presumably good intentions, Cianci delivers a second rate film that is far less punchy and humane than you expect it to be.  Still, clumsy as it is, it does make its point.  Farce has no better ally than fear.

Film Synopsis

September the 11th is a date that will acquire a special significance for François Echeveria, an unassuming Parisian bailiff.  It is on this date that, whilst performing his duties, he is taken hostage by a desperate penniless man and his son.  Holed up in the seventh floor of a housing project, the three men are mistaken for terrorists by the police.  Now the adventure really begins...