Camarades

Yan (Jean-Paul Giquel) is a dock-worker and lives comfortably with his fiancé in Saint-Nazaire. However, one day he decides to reject the bourgeois lifestyle that awaits him and moves to Paris, where he gets a job in an auto manufacturing plant and meets a local girl. Yan becomes politically mobilised and joins the worker’s union which is in the midst of carrying out a company takeover.

Marin Karmitz’s second feature, made immediately after the May ’68 movement in France, deftly focuses on the confrontation between youthful idealism and the complex reality of politics. As in his other 2 films, 7 jours ailleurs and Coup pour coup (both showing on Cinémoi) Karmitz portrays the conditions and lives of the working class with rigour and energy, as he merges a direct documentary style with dramatic fair. Likewise, the cast infect their performances with such vitality and enthusiasm, which includes the Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, who, two years later, would incarnate the unforgettable title characters of Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating.