Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I am not seeking out movies about perilous immigration! I was seeking a John Leguizamo movies when I screened “Paraiso Travel” and "Freak," a Apichatpong Weerasethakulandwhen I screened "Uncle Boonmee," a Claire Denis movie when I screen "35 Shots of Rum," a gay movie when I screened "Chicken Tikka Masala," a Plasteinian movie when I screened "Amreeka," Turkish locales when I watched Elia Kazan's "America America" again, Kurdish movies when I screened “Turtles Can Fly,” "Half Moon," and “Welcome,” since returning from the Turkish part of Kurdistan. (Not to list the intranational migrations in movies I've seen in the last month or so, and those with French people or Americans abroad... or books!)

“Welcome” (2009) is, in fact, a French movie with a Kurdish protagonist, 17-year-old Bilal (screen newcomer Firat Ayverdi) who is trying to get to London, not to live in France. London is where his love Mina (Derya Ayverdi) has been taken by a father who has other plans for marrying her off to profit the family.

We meet Bilal in Calais, within sight on clear days of the white cliffs of Dover. He has walked 4000 km from Mosul in Iraq. At a cost of 500 Euros each, he and five compatriates drop into the back of a lorry ferrying cargo across the English Channel. Having been traumatized by eight days in Turkish custody forced to wear a plastic bag over his head, he freaks out and the group is caught.

Because Iraq is at war, he is not deported. He works illegally washing dishes in a restaurant (where have we seen this before?) and appears at an indoor pool to take swimming lessons from the sad Simon Calmat (Vincent Lindon, "La Haine") whose wife Marion (Audrey Dana) has left him and is divorcing him. Civilized as his behavior in granting the divorce without contest is, Simon is most definitely still in love with Marion.

Simon is cranky to most everyone and when he intuits that Bilal wants to learn to swim so he can swim across the English  Channel, tries to discourage Bilal. In addition to Bilal being barely able to swim across a heated pool, there are currents. Even very good swimmers do not undertake swimming across the channel without a boat trailing them…

Simon allows Bilal and Zoran (Selim Akgül) to sleep in his living room rather than on the streets and coaches Bilal beyond the two lessons for which Bilal originally contracted. It is illegal under French law to aid “clandestines” and Marion is both impressed that Simon would take these risks and concerned that he will be jailed. (The penalty for “assistance to the entry, travel or undocumented stay”  in violation of L622-1 is up to five years imprisonment and 30,000 euros.)

Calls to London are expensive and difficult, because Mina’s father has found a cousin who owns a restaurant there (a man of his age) to betroth Mina to, and…

What makes the movie both entertaining and heartbreaking is the transformation of Simon into Cupid, or Cupid’s assistant. He is impressed by Bilal’s determination and contrasts the risks Bilal has already taken to his own failure to do anything to try to keep Marion. Firat Ayverdi makes Bilal’s single-mindedness and fragilities utterly believable, and Audrey Dana performs ambivalence about her husband/ex-husband convincingly. Also, Olivier Rabourdin makes the cynical policeman charged with stemming the tide of refugees through Calais convincing, retaining a sense of irony in a battle with Simon in which Lt. Caratini has most of the weapons.

The cinematography of Laurent Dailland (The Concert) in both tight internal spaces and at sea aids the project immeasurably. The truck depot is pretty amazing (shot from above).

Philippe Lioret (I'm Fine, Don't Worry) cowrote the original screenplay and directed it and presumably decided on the casting (credited to Tatiana Vialle) of Bilal and Simon.        

BTW, in addition to winning the European Parliament's Lux Prize (also won by the German-Turkish “The Edge of Heaven”) , awarded to movies that show "the process of building Europe in a different light,” "Welcome" led to an effort that so far has not succeeded to decriminalize aiding “clandestines.” The French and Kurdish in the movie are subtitled, the English is not. The ironic title is in English. There is a welcome mat in front of an apartment on the same floor as Simon’s wit the word also in English).)

The Film Movement DVD also includes a somewhat bewildering short (15:21) movie directed by Paul Cotter about a grief-stricken widower Werner (Joost Siedhoff ) who starts rebuilding the Berlin Wall (he has lived as a West Berliner with his now-dead wife btw). I don’t think that Werner says a word as some  neighbors attempt to persuade him to stop and others decide to help (plus the police).

©2011, Stephen O. Murray

Thanks to Mona for adding this film to the database.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD