‘Our Ties’: Venice Review

Dir. Roschdy Zem. France. 2022.  85mins.

In Paris, a French family of North African heritage is forced to navigate a dicey emotional landscape once a blow to the head radically changes the personality of formerly hard-working and empathetic Moussa (Sami Bouajila). Bouajila’s superb performance anchors Our Ties (Les Miens), directed by and co-starring Roschdy Zem who, drawing on events in his own family – Zem’s younger brother suffered a serious head injury – wrote the script with Maiwen, who also stars. Some French critics are hailing this ensemble drama and Venice Competition title as Zem’s best work to date as a director (it’s his sixth film since 2006) but that depends, at least in part, on how one responds to Maïwenn’s brand of family bickering. Her contribution is evident in plentiful conversations and arguments which will play as either authentic and involving or strident and annoying, well-performed though they may be.

A completely contemporary, obviously personal and ultimately uplifting entry in Zem’s wide-ranging filmography

Moussa, the ultra-conscientious financial director of a small firm, is an accommodating team player who works insane hours until a head injury transforms him into a depressed and filterless man who mostly sleeps. Moussa is very much alive but he’s rude and hostile, given to a new-found frankness that his long-suffering sister Samia (Meriem Serbah, excellent), three brothers and three children, ranging from ages 12 to 27, aren’t sure how to handle. The film is a very good portrait of how a head injury can untether one’s brain from rational behavior. Moussa has been a model citizen and suddenly he isn’t. His handsome face deformed by a protruding forehead and with pain and sadness as constant companions, circumstances unmoor him from his former life.

Moussa has always looked up to his older brother Ryad (Zem), the successful host of a panel TV show devoted to sports. (A fun scene involves Ryad dressing down — literally — a panelist played by Wild Bunch honcho Vincent Maraval, who wears baggy pants and is bare-ankled since he says the camera only shows participants from the waist up.) Ryad lives in a fab picture-windowed apartment with a view over Paris. Moussa owns a nice suburban home. These guys have definitely made it, at least professionally, but there are cracks in the facade.

Ryad apparently thinks he’s keeping apace of family goings-on, but we learn that Emma (Maiwenn), his companion of two years, is far more attuned to family dynamics than he is. Ryad has no idea that one of his brothers has been getting by on subsistence grants from the government, or that somebody close lost their sense of taste and smell from a bout of Covid-19. And nobody knows that Moussa is lying when he says his wife is fine. At the film’s outset, she has left him and, despite dozens of phone messages, refuses to communicate with her pining, plaintive spouse.

Communication skills are lacking in the extended clan. But Moussa’s health emergency obliges family members to start talking about unspoken sources of tension and resentment. Accomplished director and producer Rachid Bouchareb — who directed both Zem and Bouajila to an ensemble acting prize in Cannes for Days Of Glory — is touching as a less prosperous sibling, Salah.

Zem has funny and not-funny notions to impart about the omnipresence of mobile phones and e-communication in modern life. (The next time you want to dissolve an upper middle-class marriage in France, consult QuickDivorce.com.) Moussa’s eldest son is a follower of conspiracy theories – he humourlously lectures his family on how “some really prominent people” believe the earth is flat and how Stanley Kubrick filmed Neil Armstrong’s stroll on the moon in a studio here on that same flat planet – and refuses to use a cell phone “because they’re using them to track our every move” (possibly not so far-fetched).

In terms of subject matter and execution explored from Zem’s director’s chair, two fact-inspired films — Omar Killed Me (starring Bouajila) and Chocolat (starring Omar Sy) — continue to stand out in his repertoire as intense and disturbing tales. Our Ties is a completely contemporary, obviously personal and ultimately uplifting entry in Zem’s wide-ranging filmography.