Write what you know, they say. Les Pires (The Worst Ones in English) is the debut movie by two former casting directors, Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, telling the story of what happens when a film company comes to your disadvantaged part of town, picks your sorry ass out of a heap of fellow nobodies and puts you in a movie.
Being former casting directors and now director-directors who have done just that – gone to the rundown Picasso City in Boulogne-sur-Mer and plucked several feisty kids to star in their film about kids from a rundown estate being cast in a movie – Akoka and Geuret are clearly in the life imitates art imitates life business, and from the beginning are deliberately blurring the line between what we see and what we get.
This starts with the preamble, a casting during which we meet sexy Lily, tic-y Ryan, sulky Jessy and bullshit-detecting Maylis, the one who remarks that what the directors are clearly looking for here is “the worst ones”. Because, the look on her face says, this is going to be that familiar thing: the screed about lower-class life in places like this being godawful. The movie within a movie’s title? Pissing into the North Wind. Ken Loach, eat your heart out.
Akoka and Gueret deal with Maylis’s charge both obliquely and, later, head-on. But first let’s go back to Lily, Ryan, Jessy and Maylis. These aren’t their real names, and though they’re presented as such it’s Mallory Wanecque, Timéo Mahaut, Loïc Pech and Mélina Vanderplancke who play the roles of Lily, Ryan etc, who will go on to play roles in the film within a film. They’re all first timers and most have left it at that, apart from Wanecque, who was literally cast after picking up a flyer at the school gate and has gone on to act in a few more films. Lily’s story also echoes Wanecque’s – Lily likes acting and can see a future in it brighter than anything else on offer.
What happens when kids from sink estates get cast in a movie? How does it affect their feeling of self-worth. How do the others who weren’t cast behave with them? Akoka and Gueret don’t shy away from the fact that the “lucky” few get grief of one sort or another. But there are compensatory pluses. The young actors travel towards a more complete understanding of themselves, and towards some degree of self-confidence. Ryan, banging his head against the wall with ADHD when we meet him, calms down and gets a grip, just a bit. Lily starts to value herself. Jessy, weaker than he’s letting on, lets go in the shared love scenes with Lily when we genuinely don’t know if it’s acting we’re watching, or Jessy, or Loïc or a mix of all three.
The only real, recognisable actor on display is Johan Heldenbergh, who plays the double-denim, bearded liberal director whose film will shine a light on what life is like on this estate and perhaps, he fancifully hopes, help fix it. Or he’s a self-deluding arch exponent of poverty porn, take your pick.
Akoka and Gueret tack this way and that on the issue, pointing also to the sense of camaraderie on a film set, that it creates a social network for kids whose own family life is generally a bit crap, and that the sense of purpose of being involved in a project like this is a reward in itself.
For all the meta-this-and-that the film turns on its characters, on Lily mostly, and watching her (and by extension Mallory Wanecque) blossom makes the occasional wallow in misery truly worthwhile. You urge Lily on. All of them, in fact. Don’t fuck up. Such great acting.
The Worst Ones (Les Pires) – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
