Tonight, Karim D. (Rabah Naït Oufella) is at the height of his glory. A successful blogger and videographer, this young suburbanite of Algerian origin appears on a major literary program on France Télévisions to present his new book, Landing. The buzz on social networks is immediate and, during the evening organized by his publisher to celebrate the release of the book, a producer immediately offers the young man to carry out himself the adaptation of the beautiful work he has devoted to his mother.
Unfortunately for Karim, the flashback is just as quick as his success. In the night, indeed emerge from the meanders of the Web a series of provocative tweets published by the young man under the pseudonym of Arthur Rambo… Anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, racist statements, unacceptable in the eyes of the good Parisian society which came to incense the one she is about to lynch…
Eighth feature film by Laurent Cantet (after notably To the south in 2005, his Palme d’or Between the walls in 2008 or Back to Ithaca in 2014), Arthur Rambo is directly inspired by the Mehdi Meklat case. In 2017, this young blogger and columnist saw a media storm fall on him when, after his stint in The Great Bookstore of François Busnel, outrageous tweets had resurfaced, written under the pseudonym of Marcelin Deschamps. Tweets widely relayed by the “fachosphere” and by those close to the Republican Spring.
Portrait of a cornered man
Beyond the personality of the young suburbanite himself, it was a form of media complicity that gave him the floor (The worldthe Bondy-Blog, The Inrocks, Telerama, Mediapart, France Inter, …) which had been underlined by most of the outraged comments. Within hours, the young man of North African origin had been unanimously condemned.
This is not the point of view adopted by Laurent Cantet. His film, he focuses only on the few days following the revelation. Arthur Rambo is indeed the psychological portrait of an unmasked and hunted man, of a liar, as was already the case in The timetable in 2001 (inspired by another news item, the Jean-Claude Romand affair)… How to deal with such a media storm? How to justify the unjustifiable? If not in the name of the literary creation of an evil double imagined to exorcise the repressed anger of the invisible minorities of the French suburbs…
Unfathomable Anti-Hero
Faced with his character, Laurent Cantet refuses to place himself in the posture of the judge. He rather seeks to understand his approach, but also the role of social networks in the amplification, not to say the promotion, of these hateful and provocative messages, which bring followers and smirks.
Camped by Rabah Naït Oufella (young Franco-Algerian actor who played one of the children ofBetween the walls in 2008), Karim D./Arthur Rambo appears elusive, as if he himself was incapable of explaining, except through anger and resentment, this impulse that pushed him to pour out his hatred online… As if he himself did not really know what he thought of what he wrote about the Jews, the Charlie Hebdo or Gay Pride…
It is this ambiguity that makes all the interest of a courageous film in its strict honesty vis-à-vis a case that has undoubtedly been commented on a little too quickly, without taking the time to analyze it to understand this unfathomable gap that has been dug between two Frances. An obviously very topical subject, while France is, more than ever, in an identity crisis, as the presidential election has just shown.
Arthur RamboDrama By Laurent Cantet Screenplay Fanny Burdino, Laurent Cantet and Samuel Doux With Rabah Naït Oufella, Antoine Reinartz, Sofian Khammes… Duration 1h27
