Julie Delpy’s French Refugee Comedy

With eight movies in just over two decades, actress turned filmmaker Julie Delpy has carved out a curious niche for herself on both sides of the Atlantic. Based in Los Angeles but working predominantly in France, collaborating with Richard Linklater (the Before trilogy) on one hand and Gallic stars like Dany Boon (Lolo) on the other, switching from drama (The Countess) to comedy (Le Skylab) and back again (My Zoe), Delpy, like the frazzled characters she often plays on screen, isn’t easy to pin down.

And yet her latest work, the refugee satire Meet the Barbarians (Les Barbares), is probably her most bluntly French film to date, and certainly her most political one. But it may also be her least funny movie, steeping to clichés and caricature in its depiction of a picturesque Breton village that welcomes a family of Syrians escaping from the war. Sporting a heartfelt pro-immigrant message that feels welcome in these politically divided times, it should play best on home turf, where it goes out wide mid-September following its Toronto International Film Festival bow.

Delpy headlines an ensemble cast as Joëlle, a leftist schoolteacher who leads the charge to bring a bunch of Ukrainian refugees into Paimpoint, a quiet rural enclave located in the heart of rain-soaked Brittany. The twist is that Ukrainians are already in high demand throughout France, so there aren’t enough left to bring into town. After some backdoor maneuvering on Joëlle’s part, the village decides to bus in a family of Syrians instead, provoking an immediate uproar among its more racist citizens.

The latter consist of several cartoon-like locals with high levels of bigotry and stupidity — the kind of small-minded, provincial Frenchmen and women featured in hit Gallic comedies like Serial Bad Weddings or the Tuche series. Much of the humor in Meet the Barbarians centers around their foolish antics, and it isn’t extremely hard to figure out that the “barbarians” of the title actually refers to the townspeople themselves, even if that’s the way they would categorize their new Arab neighbors.

Delpy does a more credible job depicting the refugees, a well-educated family whose lives have been torn apart by Bashar al-Assad’s long and violent war. Lead by Marwan (Ziad Bakri), an architect who dreams of working again someday, they do everything they can to blend in with the locals, learning the language, working low-wage jobs around town and remaining tolerant amid lots of surrounding intolerance. While the French characters tend to be broadly drawn stereotypes — petty small business owners, xenophobes, adulterers or weak politicians — the Syrians all come across as actual people.

This disparity seems entirely deliberate on Delpy’s part, but it doesn’t make for great comedy. An actress like Sandrine Kiberlain usually provides solid laughs, but she’s given a mostly thankless role here as an alcoholic grocer whose husband (Mathieu Demy) is having an affair with the town butcher (Émilie Gavois-Kahn). (Cue the scene where Kiberlain’s character attacks them with a giant blood sausage.) Laurent Lafitte, who plays a plumber trying to prevent the Syrians from settling permanently in Paimpoint, has a few good lines. But his character is so despicable that he becomes another stereotype: the white working-class French racist.

Which isn’t to say such people don’t exist in real life, and as many know, France’s far-right National Rally party currently receives much of its support from rural voters. The question is whether these political realities can be mined for laughs, but Delpy seems too intent on proving a point to turn Meet the Barbarians into a humorous affair.

In fact, the film probably works best when it gets serious and a bit sentimental. A scene between Marwan and the town policeman (Marc Fraize), where they sympathize over their love of French chansons, has a touching feel to it. And the rather predictable ending, in which the plumber’s wife (India Hair) is forced to rely on Alma (Rita Hayek), a refugee who’s also an experienced doctor, brings a sudden burst of true emotion.

Despite Delpy’s attempts at broad satire, she ultimately delivers a message movie filled with hope. Sure, it’s far too preachy and never quite believable, but beneath all the typecasting in Meet the Barbarians, there’s a desire to show how a refugee situation can wind up benefiting both sides. As much as the director likes to mock and belittle her fellow Frenchies, deep down she perhaps wants them to be the best version of themselves.