Nobody's Hero (Alain Guiraudie, 2022)

The English title of this film is Nobody's Hero, while the French title, Viens je t'emmène, roughly translates as "Come on, I'll take you there." Very different titles, perhaps linked by an idea of leadership, that someone, someone specific, knows the way things should be and how to make it so. It's possible, given the critical drubbing Guiraudie's film has received since its premiere in Berlin, that he decided that any sarcastic nuances in the original title had failed to come across, and opted for something more obviously dismissive of the film's putative hero. Hard to say.

What is fairly clear is that Nobody's Hero is a film that adopts the outward trappings of a farce, but doesn't really have farcical elements at work within it. Yes, there is a lot of furtive snooping, hiding out and barely avoiding getting caught, and a running joke about the coitus interruptus of inopportune knocks on the door. But Nobody's Hero has a very serious subject at its core: Islamic terror in France and the resulting discourses of Islamophobia. And at least some of the critical dismissals hinge on the idea that Guiraudie's film is tone-deaf, trying to find comedy where is simply cannot exist.

But even though one of the film's main characters, Selim (Iliès Kadri), is a homeless Muslim teen, who gets swept up in the general paranoia following a terrorist attack at a mall in Clermont-Ferrand, he is by no means the butt of Guiraudie's "joke." For the most part, neither is Isadora (Noémie Lvovsky), the sex worker who is also central to the plot, although she does have her moments of hysteria. These people carry the cultural and political baggage of other people's expectations and fears, allowing some people to use them to create flattering images of themselves.

No, our phony hero, the primary target of Guiraudie's satire, is Médéric (Jean-Charles Clichet), an upper middle class computer programmer who meets Selim when he lets him into the foyer of his apartment building so he can have a safe place to sleep. This is the kind of self-congratulatory, liberal act that so many of us perform now and again, because we understand that it requires very little commitment and absolutely no follow-through. The vagrant will be gone in the morning, and if they aren't, you can either tell them to move along or, if necessary, call the cops.

When some of Médéric's neighbors (including, pointedly, an older Egyptian man) express concern that Selim might be one of the wanted terrorists, he halfheartedly defends the kid, then goes back to his apartment and calls the cops. They arrest Salim, then let him go. When he returns to the apartment, Médéric hacks into his email while he's showering. Among the innocuous messages from parents and scattered emails in Arabic, Médéric finds "jihadist" videos, most of which are pointedly fake. (Guiraudie shows a series of "beheadings" that are actually just kids shattering life-size plaster figures.) So Médéric calls the cops again. Things escalate from there.

But let's back up a bit. When we first meet Médéric, he is jogging and spies Isadora on the street, waiting to be picked up. He then corners her, saying that he loves her, he is different than her clients, he can "do things for you they can't do," and he should get to screw her free of charge. Amazingly, she agrees. And, based on Isadora's exaggerated caterwauling as Médéric goes down on her, he can in fact "do things." He is the man so good at sex that he got a hooker to say, "it's on the house," and in a random twist, she ends up paying him.

Médéric can access websites banned by the French government. When the neighbors are jumping to conclusions about Selim, Médéric remains calm, adopting a rational, centrist point of view. Médéric can elude a jealous husband (Renaud Rutten), who eventually concedes that Médéric is a hot dude. His attractive new boss (Dora Tillier) desperately wants to fuck him. Random people remark on how good-looking the rather shlubby Médéric is. And in the end, the great misunderstanding about Selim's supposedly shady  behavior is that he, too, is in love with Médéric. 

In short, Médéric is a Penthouse Forum letter come to life, and Nobody's Hero displays contemporary French life from the warped perspective of a smug white liberal who sees himself as the answer to every problem, but somehow never manages to put himself at risk. He just wants to be at home alone and jerk off (note Guiraudie's placement of a pump bottle of lotion next to Médéric's computer), but everyone wants to have sex with him or come to him for valuable advice. 

Of course, Médéric is the problem right from the start. And the reactions to Nobody's Hero suggest that some viewers may not be familiar with Guiraudie's deadpan surrealism, where sexual identity is instantaneously fluid, cause and effect are often suspended, and people's desires, however bizarre or socially detrimental, are enough to alter objective reality. When Médéric has a dream in which his apartment has been invaded by Muslims, they see him and begin to attack him in his own home (/country). But he's markedly naked, so the beating is indistinguishable from a rape. It very much resembles Sebastian Venable being ripped apart by Moroccan boys in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, and the suggestion is very strong that Médéric's (/France's) deepest fears and most hidden fantasies are in fact the same. Like Guiraudie's critics, the nation doth protest too much.