Cheyenne Carron is perhaps the most interesting French director to emerge in the tens of the 21th century ; a woman of contradictions,she champions tolerance and abnegation but she also praises values which are not shared by politically correct people such as hunting,return to royalty or legion etrangère camaraderie and honor values. And last but not least religion is almost always present in her efforts ;even when it does not deal with it at all ,her title is taken from a Christian prayer ("Ne nous soumets pas à la tentation"=lead us not into temptation)
"L'apôtre " and " la chute des hommes" ,are opposites sides of a coin ; but whereas in this failed latter movie ,a Jihadist urges a hostage to recant her Christian faith and to embrace Islam so as to go to Allah's paradise when he has slain her , "l'apôtre " is a message of tolerance :violence is kept to the minimum and only intervenes in the final scenes .
"L'apôtre " is both Carron 's most religious movie and
,oddly , her most accessible and her most satisfying ; it owes a lot to Fayçal Safi ,then hailed as one of the most promising newcomers ,quite rightly so . He portrays a young Muslim,who's fascinated by a Christian priest's attitude :although his sister was murdered by a neighbour , the man of God continues to live near the assassin's family 's house , "to help them to live" , applying Jesus Christ's "return good for evil" commandment .
Much time is given over to scenes where the young Muslims study the Coran ,and Akim does not give up on his religion overnight ; he comes against his coreligionists and his own family,particularly his brother whose faith in Allah must not ,in a world of Sundays ,called into question.
Matching Safi, all along his rocky road is Yannick Guérin's portrayal of a truly saint vicar, who never tries to convert Akim ,but simply explains to him why Jesus would approve of his forgiveness:the Saviour forgave the good thief on the cross after all ; the interminable conversations one often finds in Carron's works are sometimes downright boring ;but ,in "l'apôtre", they are absorbing, passionate and pivotal ; the vicar epitomes the good Samaritan of the Gospels. But ,on the other hand , he never claims to possess the truth and he does think there's not much difference between Allah and God : never, except in the violent (and in this context irrelevant)scene when Akim is worked over , the Islam is demeaned :this religion too preaches love,charity (to give to the poor is one of their tenets)and forgiveness.
Although this is Carron's only movie to be entirely devoted to faith , religion would become a permanent feature in her works : in "la morsure des dieux " ,neither the bourgeois priest who drives a shining car nor his girlfriend won't convert the hero who does not believe in a God forever absent ; although no miracle occurs in "l'Apôtre " ,she would use "divine interventions" several times afterwards : "le soleil reviendra " ,"le fil d'un roi" ; and the final pictures of the otherwise unconvincing "la chute des hommes " depicts some kind of jihadist's road of Damascus .
If you want to discover Miss Cheyenne's work ,this is definitely the movie to begin with.
