Les Sanguinaires

December 1999: François, a Parisian travel agent, cannot bear the thought of the impending celebratory chaos in Paris. He therefore takes his family and friends with him to the remote island of ‘Les Sanguinaires’, just off the coast of Corsica. However, upon their arrival, François finds abandoning himself to the joys of nature and societal freedom is a lot harder than expected. You can take the man out of the city, but… One of eight medium-length films commissioned by French television to commemorate or comment upon the upcoming millennium, Les Sanguinaires is a testament to such a collective and subsidized approach to filmmaking in France. A melting pot of ideas, this film was conceived by a promising upstart called Laurent Cantet, who ten years later would be the first Frenchman to be collecting the coveted Palme D’Or at Cannes for The Class (Entre les murs). Les Sanguinaires signals many of the themes that would recur in his lauded subsequent works, such as the suffocating trappings of modern life (Les Ressources humaines or L’Emploi du temps), and the desire to escape to more exotic climes (Vers le sud). However, things are never simple in Cantet’s world and despite the valid reasons for François’ evasion in Les Sanguinaires, the director cannily evinces the pitfalls and reality checks that come with such idealism. Nature can be as unforgiving as the synthetic, urban world and above all, it is the personal state of one’s soul which dictates the environment’s effect upon the subject. Mixing social critique with deft observational humour, Cantet reveals the defects of his protagonist and grandiose ideas upon the eve of this historical moment. Considering the director’s subsequent career trajectory to his position as one of the most important filmmakers working today, Les Sanguinaires places itself on the eve of a historically significant career.