Huit fois debout (2010)
Directed by Xabi Molia

Film Review

An impressive debut feature from writer-director Xabi Molia, Huit fois debout effectively combines two of the mainstays of French cinema, romantic comedy and social realist drama, to provide an intensely likeable film that is both a thoughtful morality tale for our times and a sobering reflection on contemporary society.  One of the good things to come out of the present economic downturn is that it has led us all (excluding of course the tax-dodging, self-sufficient super rich) to question the value of materialism and re-evaluate what it means to have a successful life.  Molia's insightful and idiosyncratic film provides a timely reminder that what matters most in life is not material wealth or career success, but whether we manage to achieve fulfilment at a personal level, as part of a society to which we feel we belong.  Since the downturn began there seems to have been a greater willingness for individuals to relate to others, an encouraging reversal of the hideous me-me-me culture that has run rampant during the consumer boom of the past twenty years.  Material wealth and job security do not make us better people; quite the reverse.  These merely make us fat, selfish and complacent.  As Molia's film eloquently implies, it is only when our creature comforts are taken away from us that we begin to realise the importance of other people and are able to grow to achieve our true potential as human beings.

The two main characters in Huit fois debout - played by two immensely talented actors (Julie Gayet and Denis Podalydès) with extraordinary depth and conviction - are types we can all easily identify with nowadays, a man and a woman who, in early middle-age, find themselves without work, homeless, socially adrift and struggling to exist in a world from which they appear to be totally disenfranchised.  Yet they are not hopeless failures, embittered folk who wallow in the misery of their predicament and expect sympathy from all around them.  They are people who take what comes philosophically and appear to be enriched by their experiences.  Admittedly, life on the margins is far from easy.  Finding full-time employment appears to be a virtual impossibility, particularly as both characters seem to be in an existential quandary over the value of work.  The odd jobs they are forced to take just to survive are ill-paid, humiliating, demanding and potentially dangerous.  Yet both characters appear to benefit from their experiences, finding a meaning in their lives that would be denied them had they stayed on the more comfortable path enjoyed by those having a secure job and stable home.

This is not a polished film, nor a particularly well-structured one, but its surface naivety and roughness give it a realist edge and biting lyricism that much of today's cinema so often lacks.  The unevenness of the narrative, with its abrupt mood swings and occasional poetic excursion into a kind of weirdness that borders on surrealism, underscore the extreme precarity of the protagonists' lives and the uncertainty they most cope with as they make the best of their hand-to-mouth existence.  Huit fois debout is not a cry of despair but a wake-up call that rings with optimism.  With so much doom and gloom around at the moment, the film could hardly have been more pertinent or more welcome, an exhortation to embrace rather than resent the long winter of austerity that lies ahead of us, after those empty decades of mindless consumption.  Maybe there is hope for humanity after all.

Film Synopsis

Elsa tries to get by doing odd-jobs whilst looking for a real job that will allow her to take custody of her son.  Mathieu, her next-door neighbour, is also busy job hunting, but is proving to be just as unsuccessful at finding suitable employment.  As their situation becomes increasingly precarious, Elsa and Mathieu cling to the hope that they will find their feet in a world that doesn't appear to suit either of them...