Film Review: The Connection (La French) 2014 - Cédric Jimenez - Jean DuJardin

If I could only recommend you go and see one film this year, The Connection would be it.

The film follows the true story of the rise and fall of Pierre Michel "The Judge", played by The Artist's Oscar winning Jean Dujardin, against the Marseillaise mafia gang The French Connection in the 1970s. The story had already been put to cinema in The Judge (1984), but this time the story's been redone much more ambitiously.

It's a typical good guy versus bad guy story, but it's the bells and whistles in this film that really make it so much more than that. The director achieves the perfect combination of action, drama, comedy and tragedy with the irrepressible Mediterranean sun beating down on every daytime scene in the film. The Mediterranean settings give the film a sense of glamour and surrealism, juxtaposing the surreal nature of life as a successful drug trafficker in the 1970s, passing time between seaside villas and the biggest nightclub in Marseille.

This is film making at its best - it's as if the screen writer and director Cédric Jimenez pulled out an old school book of film making craft written in the 1970s and followed all the old rules to perfection to bring about not only a brilliant piece of cinematic entertainment, but also of art. This film is a living, breathing and intimate nostalgic reinvention of the 1970s and a just and accurate portrayal of a real gangster story, with some liberties in representing the character's private lives.

Cédric Jimenez grew up himself in Marseille in the 1970s and says that the story of the Judge has run through his veins his whole life. He has wanted to make this film as long as he has wanted to be a film maker, starting his career initially as a documentary maker. He chose to shoot the whole film with a hand held camera, which gives the film it's intimate and raw feeling.

It is an absolute viewing pleasure to be immersed back into the 1970s era and the sets and costumes have been rendered to perfection, to every last detail. The velour furniture, the dingy nightclubs, the glamourous dresses and old style police surveillance technologies are a delight to rediscover. The cowboy style of policing in the 1970s makes the action scenes much more exciting than anything depicting the risk-averse 2000s - the only person in the film wearing even a bullet proof vest is the gang leader Gaëtan "Tany" Zamper (Gilles Lellouche).

There are countless unforgettable scenes in this film, the dialogue is witty, the action is edgy and the acting is superb. Another highlight is the film's soundtrack featuring endless classics from the 1970s (Blondie, Kim Wilde and the Velvet Underground) and tunes by composer Guillaume Roussel that reflect the film soundtracks of the time (for example, his tune Meurtre de fou).  It can be tough to watch a sub-titled film for 2h15min, but believe me it's worth it.

Five out of five stars from me. *****

Link to soundtrack list: http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-221419/soundtrack/
Link to Meurtre de fou: http://www.deezer.com/track/90537423

The Day I Met a Chechen Mafia Hitman on the Trans-Siberian Train…

2nd May 2013

We're on the Trans-Siberian route back to Moscow 36 hours on the train. Masha, our guide, meets a Chechen guy in her cabin who takes half a day to talk to her, but when he finally does he straight out tells her he has a gun on him. She invites him to come and meet us, because he's been asking about us. Via her translation we have a long conversation with him after lunch. He's 28 and he's (apparently, assuming we believe all he says about himself…) head of security in a mafia security company in Moscow. He has a Chechen wife in Chechnia with 3 children, a Russian wife in Dubai and a mistress who he doesn't support in every city he works in over Russia, about five. He says your wife should fear you and that every woman is a liar. He believes world war three will begin in Syria according to prediction in the Koran and that Hitler always wanted to create Israel and because his wife was Jewish, he wasn't really anti-semite. He believes the Queen of England wants to move to Australia like most Westerners and he believes they are all preparing to move to Australia when WWIII begins. He believes the Chechen language was the language of Noah, as in Noah's ark and sites that in Chechen Adam means person. He tells us his name is Aslan.

Aslan used to be a free wrestler and his brother was the World Champion free wrestler in 1997 (which makes him some dude called Kuramagomed Kuramagomedov according to google). A Chechen won the free wrestling at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. He said we in Australia live in a bubble and assumed we didn't know much about Islam, so I told him some of us had travelled in the Middle East and one of my best friends is Iraqi. We said we're trying to get out of our bubble. I asked if he thought Russia had the same influence as the USA on Israel and he said that no one has any control in Israel. I asked if he's happy with the situation in Chechnya and he said he wouldn't be working in Moscow if he was happy. He doesn't want his children to grow up in Moscow because it's Sin City. He asked about kangaroo meat and was interested to learn from Tim that you can find Halal kangaroo meat. He believes Australia is the land of plenty and we tried to explain to him that it wasn't entirely true, but it was hard to know if we managed to convince him at all; he was obviously a man of conviction. He gave Tim advice on having multiple wives that Julia and Masha didn't enjoy translating. He joked that if your wife misbehaves you can shoot her. Everyone laughed nervously.

Aslan is a man of average to shorter height, bulky but fit, wearing a cap and track suit. He looks to me like a fair Lebanese - he has honey brown hair and sapphire blue eyes that pierce and intimidate you if you let them. He's not handsome and his face is very aged, he could be ten years older than me, but he's 29 in October. He was more than happy to share his world view and I/we flattered him with our full attention so he'd continue to talk freely. His mannerisms were aloof and relaxed, his lower lip relaxed, his shoulders hunched over from years of weight lifting and he'd hold your eyes longer than most people are comfortable with, but I boldly held eye contact with him and ignored his comments about women.

He said if you're honest and brave in Moscow then you can make good money there. Honesty was definitely a virtue of his. He had lunch with Masha, paid for her. The others found our talk too full-on, but it was the highlight of my trip. I was sitting opposite him and I asked most of the questions, some of them pretty bold, but I was careful not to overstep. I didn't let on I knew too much (having just finished reading McMafia by Misha Glenny so my head was full of Mafia information) about his world and I tried to show him empathy to make him comfortable and to try to explain a few things about Australians to give him a good impression of us and our country, but we found out more about him than he did about us.

He said he's never been on Moscow's Red Square, because it's not seen as a cool thing to do. Instead he's driven by in his car and he said maybe one day he'll visit it at night in a hoody to hide his face. He's afraid of flying and tries to avoid it.

When we pulled into Moscow we saw him meeting a Ukrainian mistress at the station. He wanted us to see her and he wanted to show off to us how powerful and successful he was. We were a little disappointed though that the Ukrainian wasn't as stereotypically gorgeous as she could have been, and really, at least the facts stand that he was just a guy in a track suit that we met on the train who could have been anyone.