One year after Bac Nord, Cédric Jimenez has returned with a new adaptation of a news story, and indeed a new explosive thriller: Novembre, presented out-of-competition at the Cannes 2022 Film Festival. In it, Cédric Jimenez traces the five days that followed the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris and the frantic hunt for the perpetrators of these barbaric acts by France's anti-terrorist cell and police forces. The film is broadcast on television this Friday, April 7, at 9:10pm on Canal+.
Jean Dujardin, who looks like Gilles Lellouche - their final merger seems closer than ever - plays the right-hand man of the head of the anti-terrorist unit (Sandrine Kiberlain), who is necessarily on edge in view of events. From the film's very first scene -pure action that is, in the end, a rehash of the famous Bac Nord scene on the floors of a Marseilles building, here relocated to Greece - the film adopts a frenetic pace that it will not let go of for the entire 1.5 hours of Novembre, supported by muted bass and a constant, frenetic sound track in the manner of an Americanblockbuster , Jimenez's new niche. Quite simply, not a single sentence is uttered by Dujardin without being shouted or inveighed at.
Opposite him is an iron-fisted Sandrine Kiberlain in a velvet glove, albeit at the end of her rope, and a more-than-invested Anaïs Demoustier who does whatever she wants, to the point of no longer respecting any procedures - don't worry, some police actions carried out according to the rules also ring a little hollow. Lyna Khoudri's performance, touching in its accuracy and fragility, stands out in the not-so-simple role of the young witness close to Hasna Aït Boulahcen, who helped locate the latter's cousin, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, in Saint-Denis, and whose life was destroyed as a result of this collaboration, the French state having initially refused her protected witness status, then still reserved for repentants.
The suspense is definitely there. Carried along by a nervous, dynamic editing style, Novembre is an effective piece of entertainment that keeps you on the edge of your seat. But Jimenez leaves out an important part of the November 13th attacks, both inside and outside the walls of the SDAT: the emotion that ran through our spines that night, and the trauma that is still very much with us.
Police work is obviously and eminently commendable, and Jimenez's choice not to show any of the attacks - and therefore not to lapse into crass sensationalism - and only talk about the facts, the meetings, the phones that never stop ringing, the actions and the orders barked, is a choice like any other. But this biased treatment makes us feel slightly uneasy, as it's so far removed from the very real sense of dismay felt by millions of French people who have been affected in one way or another. The same goes for Jimenez's characters, whose names and bodies are reduced to a uniform, a function or a place in front of a computer screen, period, without any effort or desire to tell us more about these men and women who did and gave everything to protect France.
There's no thought for the victims and survivors either, apart from some brief but touching interviews at their hospital bedsides. For Jimenez, the focus is on the police search in the days following the attacks on the Stade de France, the Bataclan and the Parisian terraces; the microcosm of the hive of anti-terrorism activity ; and the search for the culprits in the streets of Paris, on the roads to Belgium, even in the groves of Seine-Saint-Denis, whose authentic photographs used in the film - those of Abdelhamid Abaaoud and the other terrorists who are not embodied by actors - anchor Novembre in a reality that demands that all aspects of this dramatic night be respected, and therefore that of affect.
Considering that a national tragedy of such magnitude and still so fresh can be summed up in an hour-and-a-half long, beat-up action film, ultimately makes us want to revisit the documentary November 13: Fluctuat Nec Mergitur to remember the depth and vulnerability of all the protagonists of that night, victims and heroes alike.
