Avant-garde Catalan filmmaker with a French address, Albert Serra, made another enigmatic film, but unlike several of his previous works, which took place during the 17th or 18th century, he now brings a modern story. However, “Pacifiction” is anything but an ordinary film, a slow-moving artistic drama with a rather strange atmosphere, conceived somewhat elliptically, as if Serra wanted to say that nothing changes in an exotic place such as one of the islands of French Polynesia where the action of the film unfolds. Well, even though the respected French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema chose “Pacificion” as the best film of the year, I can’t say that I share their opinion, and I can’t say that I’ve changed much about Serra compared to his previous, hard-to-watch films.
And “Pacifiction” is quite a difficult, tiring film, incredibly slow-paced, stylized and visually impressive, which drags on for almost three hours. Even though Serra threw in some elements of a classic thriller about paranoia, because on that peaceful, quiet and sleepy island governed by France, there will be rumors that nuclear tests are being prepared there again. The one who should know this is the high administrator De Roller (Benoit Magimel is the winner of the Cesar award for the best actor), and his behavior is not too different from the role of the governor in the colonial era. And he is obviously an extremely calculating man who always puts his own well-being first, and he solves practically everything that takes place on the islands.
But “Pacification” is far from a politically intriguing thriller, it’s more like a character study in which little actually happens. Just as time seems to stand still on that exotic island, that real Pacific paradise on earth, so it seems that De Roller easily keeps under control all the legal and illegal affairs there, and those in between. He visits hotels, nightclubs where all kinds of weirdos gather for whom the natives prepare exotic dances, meets with various people, tries to calm the local population who are increasingly worried about the rumors about testing, and at the same time fears that these rumors were started by China or Russia in order to expanded their and undermined French influence.
And you can feel the tension, and Serra’s intention here seems to have been to imagine what that late colonialism looks like, where the once huge European empires were left with only a few overseas territories. What could the life and work of a French administrator look like on the other side of the world, and how much influence can he have today, apart from a symbolic one. Therefore, De Roller also tries to overemphasize his importance, he tries to deal with everything and anything just to appear more important than what he is, but in fact he is aware that he is stuck in a completely irrelevant corner of the world and the only thing left for him is to get the most out of it. for me.