13 m²

"13 m²" suffers ,like many contemporary French movies from a weak script and poor lines .To be successful,the movie should have focused on the "13 m²" (13 square meters)whereas our three heroes,taking all the chances ,are eating fast food under the police's nose .What could have been an interesting "in camera" drama becomes the umpteenth story of a stickup:one good thing,they do not show the attack.The young hoodlum is not to be congratulated ,if you know that one of the security guards is none other than his girlfriend's brother !Berenice Bejo is strictly decorative and Thierry Lhermitte is wasted in a non existent part.

Great "social cinema". Just narrating the facts, neither glorifying nor condemning the characters, just the facts.

Beautiful urban views, then make nice what it's not. The sparsely used classical score only underlines part of what is missing. Music itself is very well chosen, it goes very well with the mood.

Violence is there. Real, without much "sense" or "meaning". Mistakes are made, thiefs are stolen, the public/ "the people" is dumb buy sympa. Thierry and Berenice are great supporting actors. It's no wonder that "Jose" also wrote AND directed it! "Bagnolet" should be part of city tours, so that us naive tourists don't believe Paris is only the shiny spots :).

Barthélemy looks the part. He reminds me of an Argentine actor, Rodrigo De la Serna, in "Okupas", another (very) gritty story. Both actors aren't big and mean in the American sense. They look desperate, their empty stare tells you they could do whatever, because they stopped caring. Whether it's "nature or culture" is up to the viewer to decide.

The reason why I decided to watch this was because of the rather intriguing premise, but what was delivered fell short on some accounts, and seemed to overstretch itself without enough fuel to run a full feature.

Written, directed and starring Barthelemy Grossmann in the lead role of small time thug Jose, we learn that he's being hunted by much bigger fish because of money owed, and being down and out and always on the run doesn't bode well in keeping a girlfriend (Berenice Bejo) constantly waiting. He overhears her conversation with her brother, an armed security escort, talking about the security exposures of his armoured vehicle, and hatches a plan to steal a cool 2 million Euros within.

Since this is not a heist movie, we don't see that action sequence at all, except following the event through voice-overs, and learn that the plan has gone a little awry. Together with his collaborators Farouk (Lucien Jean-Baptiste) and Reza (Youssef Hajdi), they stay off the radar of both their community and the police in a 13m2 sized hideout, hence the title.

The film then becomes what it actually is, an examination of trust and that honour amongst thieves, as they bicker about the money, the event that transpired, and if you'd like, it became a postmortem of sorts, looking into the personalities of each character, and leaving you to guess who would likely bail out of their fragile bonds. There's tremendous money at stake, weapons in place, and a relatively foolproof plan that would work if they execute it accordingly. And that means they must last the hibernation and one another's guts for an extended period of time. But we know that human nature will dictate that rules will be broken, and tensions rising because it's winner takes all should someone determine that they have the upper hand over the others.

Alas the flaw of the film is that it went out into the gritty streets too often, akin to breaking its own rule of lying low, as the film betrayed its own premise by taking the characters outside, and destroying the tension that it tried hard to establish. The character of Jose, ridden with guilt, also failed to establish a connection for an audience to sympathize with, because he started off as quite the prick and stayed that way, and without witnessing first hand the traumatic incident, it became nothing more than an attempted showcase by Barthelemy Grossmann to show off his acting chops.

The finale too felt a little too rushed as it highlighted the mantra that crime does not pay. But thankfully it knew when to pull the plug rather than allowing it to drag out for too long. The character motivations do get a little muddled as well in the end, especially with what Jose chose to do, so you'd pretty much figure that there might be an alternate ending to the one being presented.

Writing and directing are one hundred percent authentic, and I don't even speak about the dialogues, realistic at the most. The maker(s) of this films are obviously from the suburb ghetto. The only problem is the obvious lack of budget. For instance, we never see the heist, only hear the gunfight noise of it. This is very frustrating, and at one moment, I thought of RESERVOIR DOGS - which every one knows - or Xavier Durringer's LES VILLAINS or J'IRAI AU PARADIS CAR L'ENFER EST ICI, where we also had the scheme of hoodlums before and - or - after a heist. But this one is anyway worth the watch for French crime films buffs. One last thing, it is not here question of high scale gangsters, but just petty hoodlums. And I also want to say that there is a goof. The armored truck heist is supposed to take place under a bridge, and the broadcast news several hours later report a heist taken place Boulevard Raspail - in Paris I suppose - but there is no bridge Boulevard Raspail in Paris. And no gangster has never attacked an armored truck INSIDE Paris. Too much trafic to permit a safe and quick getaway.... They only pull armored truck heists on freeways, motorways or in the suburbs, not far from a motorway....