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Red Soil
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Year: |
2020
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Director: |
Farid Bentoumi
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Stars: |
Zita Hanrot, Sami Bouajila, Celine Sallette, Olivier Gourmet, Henri-Noel Tabary, Alka Balbir, Thierry Rousset, Laurent Crozet, Evelyne Cervera, Thierry Simon, Maxime Bodolec, Antonia Buresi, Matthieu Loos, Olivier Faraggi, Vanessa Desmaret
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Genre: |
Drama |
Rating: |
         6 (from 1 vote) |
Review: |
Nour Hamadi (Zita Hanrot) is a young doctor who used to work in a French hospital until the pressure got too much for her to handle, and she had to bow out. But she can still use her medical training in her new job, which her father Slimane (Sami Bouajila) has secured for her at the chemical plant he works in, as they were looking for a new company doctor and she fits the bill. This is all very well, but Slimane warns her away from the inspectors who sniff around looking for flaws in the operation of the site which could place everyone who has a post there in peril, risking their redundancy. But what if their lives were also at risk?
The most damning thing you can say about co-writer and director Farid Bentoumi's Red Soil, or Rouge as it was originally called, is that it's achingly predictable. You can already guess how this will play out from the above introduction, can't you? And you would most likely be correct, yet that was not damning because it was bad filmmaking, quite the opposite, this was good filmmaking, it was simply that we had seen this scenario in real life so often that it more or less wrote itself. You are aware, through intuition or experience, that the corporation is a polluter causing devastation to the wider environment, since this has happened in truth.
When the caption appears at the close stating that this was based on true events, there's the accusatory nature of the piece: it damns the corporations of this world who could take steps to radically overhaul their procedures to render them safe, but they have not, preferring to rake in huge profits instead of applying that money to research and practicality in the drive to make the environment a better place. And when the secondary issue arises - the pollution is giving the workers and locals, often the one and the same people, cancer that is ruining their life expectancies, again, we all know about Meryl Streep in Silkwood whether we've seen that film or not.
Or have even heard of Silkwood, for there was a true story that influenced the telling of these stories ever since. Red Soil was produced by Belgium's arthouse darlings the Dardenne brothers, therefore to prevent it unfolding as a dry list of facts about the crimes of the big polluters, there was also the human tale too. Partly Nour's relationship with her sister and her brother-in-law who works at the plant and does not wish to lose his job to the point of willingness to risk his life to sustain a regular salary, but mostly between Nour and Slimane, a once-close bond that is deeply threatened when she starts discussing the problems with a journalist, Emma (Celine Sallette), who is investigating the company and its abuses.
In truth, there was a feeling the filmmakers had drawn up a shopping list of matters to be brought up and weighed up against one another: on one hand there was the prematurely dying workers, on the other the fact they need jobs and if the plant goes, the region slides into destitution. Or how about this: on one hand the poisoning of the land around the area will make it uninhabitable anyway, but the Green politics usher the working classes fearful for their incomes straight into the arms of the fascist parties who will use the issue as a hot topic and ensure the decline continues for flimsy but convincing patriotic motives, thus not only ensuring nothing changes ecologically for the better, but the society declines into the far right as well. This had been billed in some places as an eco-thriller, but it was more measured and less suspenseful than that, as you knew where it was going, and that left the appeals to the emotions for the drama, which were a little overcooked. There was no arguing with the message, however. Music by Pierre Desprats.
[Signature Entertainment presents Red Soil on Digital Platforms 16th August 2021.]
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Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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