Gang wars, supernatural forces and the apocalypse: that’s what the original fantasy film Salem handles, which has a lot going for it ahead of many genre contemporaries.
Contemporary fantasy with a stunning young cast and a real sense of its setting is what Salem offers. In his second feature film, director Jean-Bernard Marlin mixes gang wars, a love story à la Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and the biblical plagues (!) into a dark tale of guilt and atonement.
Imagine the banlieue thriller Athena, which wowed on Netflix last year, but with a dash of fantasy!
In the fantasy film, the apocalypse is upon us
Salem is set in a place that could hardly be further from the green pastures of the Shire and other fantastic settings: the northern neighbourhoods of Marseille.
Paved with high-rise blocks, this stretch of land usually attracts the nation’s attention because of headlines about gang crime. In this, the setting resembles that of the cinematic suburban riot from Athena. Djibril and Camilla grow up in the north of Marseille. He comes from the Camores, belongs to the Roma and their neighbourhoods fight each other like Montagues and Capulets.
Salem
Together, the teens are expecting a child when he witnesses a murder. The dying boy puts a curse on the two quarters in their death throes like Thybalt in Shakespeare. And like Romeo, Djibril himself becomes a murderer. He is imprisoned, but the vision of the dead man does not let him go. Apocalyptic plagues descend on the high-rise blocks. His firm belief: only his supernaturally gifted daughter can save the people. However, she has no interest in contact with him.
Salem combines mileu feel with clever shootouts
I had to dig deep to describe this story in a semi-understandable way, which reads like the whiteboard after a sleepless 72-hour brainstorming session (sort of like going to a festival in Cannes, in other words). Amazingly, underneath the jumble of ideas, the film by Jean-Bernard Marlin (director of César winner Scheherazade) feels light on its feet and confident. We are led into this microcosm full of verve, recognise its power relations without much exposition and take the young people between the fronts to their hearts.
The basis of this fantasy film is clearly reality, both in terms of the different ethnicities, cultures and religions in the “hotspot neighbourhoods” and the authentic staging of young love. It is supported by an extraordinarily credible cast that seems born for the camera. First and foremost the charismatic Wallenn El Gharbaoui, who plays Djibril’s daughter Ali.
Salem
However, there is no lack of show values either. One shootout features classic, tough Western ideas, including a waving bed sheet that reveals the perpetrator’s position. Another is more like an execution and shocks with its casualness. Not to mention the fantasy intrusions not described in detail here.
Every now and then, the film races away from its own ideas and bends its script twists a little too easily. What impressed me about this film, however, was on the one hand the visual flair with which Marlin goes about his work and which seems fresh even decades after Hate and a year after Athena. Here is a director who can do great things with the right material.
Secondly, I was impressed by the courage of simplicity. The Romeo-and-Juliet-meets-X-Men plot sounds overloaded, but Salem is told like a parable whose symbolically charged twists say more than dialogue could. It is by no means a perfect film. However, it captivates with an originality and irrepressible closeness to life that make most of what you currently see in the fantasy genre look pale.
