Quickcard Review Welcome

Directed by: Philippe Loiret Cast: Vincent Lindon, Firat Ayverdi, Audrey Dana Running Time: 2hrs 15 min Rating: R

COMPLETE COVERAGE - 33rd Portland International Film Festival

PLOT: Bilal (Ayverdi), a seventeen-year-old Kurdish refugee, arrives in France. He needs to get to London, where the love of his life is now situated with her family, but the French government is not allowing refugees to leave the country. Bilal pays a swimming coach named Simon (Lindon) to train him to swim across the English Channel.

WHO'S IT FOR? I think everyone should see this movie. Not only to catch a glimpse of how people are treated in other countries, but we need to see our own shadow as well.

OVERALL

The Kurdish refugees who fled to Europe were regarded as criminals and interlopers and treated like human detritus. Welcome is unrelenting in its depiction of how these people were treated. What makes it so effective is that it's mostly the small things that we all take for advantage, but when removed, the accumulative result is that the characters are thoroughly downtrodden. The Kurds aren't allowed to set foot in the grocery store, even though they have money and all they want is to buy some soap. Anyone who wants to lend a hand is hauled in by the police and questioned for "harboring clandestines." Nazi Germany, anyone? Bilal is immensely good-hearted, but he's kicked around and treated like dirt and no one else is allowed to stand up for him.

I wish there was any way for me to truly do this film justice. Words fail me. It was excellent and it was god-awful all at once, and I sort of wish I'd never seen it. I hate these vivid reminders that, as a species, we tend to be hypocritical, nasty douche bags. Welcome gives you a long, painful look at things that actually happen. When the refugees are taken into custody, they are shoved into a tiny room and each one is assigned a number--and not like the DMV, where you take a number and then wait your turn and it's bureaucratic but ultimately civilized. No, the guards write a number on each person's hand with a sharpee pen. Obviously the historical implications are sinister, but it's also just a repellent, stupid thing to do. It makes my skin crawl that these types of things still happen, and I'm sure it's much more routine than I'd like to think.

It makes me very, very angry. It makes me wish I was omnipotent, so I could actually do something about it NOW. It's another nail in the coffin for my respect for humanity when I already had plenty of nails--they are sticking out, higgledy piggledy and someone's going to end up with lockjaw. I need our world to get better at a faster rate. Until then, I'll be in Piranha 3D and the remake of Clash of the Titans in an effort to subdue my roiling frustration. The more IQ points I can knock off, the better.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10