Le Nom des Gens By Michel Leclerc

Our names and faces are what the world around us is always confronted with first. They are decisive in the inevitable instant judgement of the first encounter, and yet, we don’t get to choose them.

For Arthur Martin in Le Nom des Gens, bearing the same name as 17 000 other citizens and a famous kitchen fabricant is like having ‘Mister Everybody’ tattooed on his forehead. Although in Michel Leclerc’s second feature this actually comes as a benediction on the day Arthur meets Bahia. Because in a France that recently under polemical and tumultuous circumstances started a nauseous quest for national identity, Martin sounds strikingly orthodox and rhymes unmistakably with right-wing. It sounds like a call to arms for Bahia, who’s bathing in pristine liberalism and goes by the slogan "make love not war". Literally.

Le Nom des Gens goes far behind the comedic surface of this synopsis. The seamless script works with recurrent themes, yet what the main characters incarnate is merely their own persona. In contrast to the present of Bahia and Arthur lie their different origins. One has an Algerian father and French hippie mother, the other is Jewish, but they can easily hop into another costume or simply drown out the past in a spiral of silence. While Bahia uses the power of appearances to shift between being Algerian, French or Muslim to reach her goals, Arthur doesn’t really know why he’s uncomfortable telling people that his grandparents were deported, and even less why he doesn’t dare ask his mother who they actually were.

The traditional silent meal Arthur has with his parents throughout the movie serves as marker of his evolution. The times when this lunch was just another regular dull moment in his life are over when he meets the tornado that is Bahia. One hour becomes an eternity, and the silence seems to have grown deeper.

When the dialogues stop between the otherwise chatty scenes, it’s not just an absent of noise but the pure essence of taboo. Through its upbeat layer, the film spells out a commentary which one could effectively use as a basis for debate. Leclerc and his co-writer Baya Kasmi have put their fingers on a raw nerve. By layering just the right amount of comedy onto a latent, creeping discomfort of current society, the film leaves us with a refreshing will to act, a welcome feeling of optimism, and a reminder that appearances and surprises go hand in hand.

By Maximilien Van Aertryck