Wednesday 10th October, 2007
"L’Ennemie Intime" is a new French movie that aims to portray the Algerian war of Independence. Unlike the genial, “The Battle of Algiers”, which takes place in the capital of Algeria, “L’Ennemie Intime” depicts the military actions of the French army on the Algerian country side. The opening scene is about a mission to a Kabyle village. The films shows indirectly the atrocities committed during the war by the Algerian FLN (Front de Liberation National) like the killing of dissidents, including women and children who refused to help in the independence campaign, or who aided the French army. But it focuses on the equally atrocious actions committed by the French. Through the development of its main characters, the film shows a nuanced view of the actors within the war. Rather than portraying all the French soldiers as “evil” or ill intentioned, it shows how the situations they saw themselves involved in forced them to act in actions that the soldiers had previously disapproved, including torture.
This movie finds a lot of echoes with the war on Iraq, in particular, its handling of a people set to obtain independence at all costs, an unsustainable invasion, and the commitment of terrible acts of torture and terror that affect not only civilians but also combatants who end up permanently traumatized when not simply dead.
"The Intimate Enemy" is the French version of the American drama faced in Vietnam which was depicted in movies like “Apocalypse Now”, although “L’Ennemie Intime” is much less surrealistic and psychedelic. Showing the mental stress caused by war in a very realistic and powerful way.
An interesting point is that Algerians fought on both sides of this war. In one scene there is an interesting exchange between a FLN fighter and an Algerian fighting with the French. They were now at opposite sides of the conflict, even while both of them had fought on the Allied front fighting against the Germans in the bloody battle of Monte Casino outside of Rome. Left alone, the Kabyle fighting on the French side gives the other man a cigarette and asks him why is he now against the French, even while he defended France against the Nazis and was decorated for that.
The Algerian man answers, “For the French to be occupying Algeria is like the occupation that the German’s did of France.” He then lights the cigarette on both ends and says, “You are like this cigarette. On one side, you have the FLN against you, they see you as a traitor. On the other side you have the French. You fight for them but they will never see you as a Frenchman. What ever you do you have lost from the start. At the end you will no longer know who you are.” (paraphrase)
Along with “Indigènes” and other recent movies, “L’Ennemie Intime” is bringing the Algerian occupation back into the collective consciousness of the French polity, or at least to its filmic record.
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