Voir du pays (The Stopover)

Directors: Delphine & Muriel Coulin
Screenplay: Delphine and Muriel Coulin
Soko's role: Marine
Co-starring: Ariane Labed, Ginger Romà
Release Date: 7 September 2016 (France)
Length: 102 minutes
Genre: drama
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1

Muriel Coulin told Caroline Besse of Télérama: "We have sought to be neither black nor white, and to come closer to the human experience: what does it mean to go to war when one has a woman's body? How does a trauma materialize? Why in 90% of the cases, there remains an image? Because it is proved by the psys that in most cases, the trauma crystallizes on a sense. Which can be an odor, a sound, but in the majority of cases, it is an image that remains printed in the brains of the combatants, and which prevents them from living."

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Marine and Aurore, who have been friends since they were very young, arrive in the Greek half of Cyprus with the rest of their French Army unit for three days of decompression. They have been in Afganistan for six months.

Since 2008, all French soldiers returning from a foreign war go through a "decompression" under the care of army psychologists, to help them remove the images of war from their minds. The program includes sports, yoga, boat trips (when possible), and meetings in which each soldier must tell the story of his or her six months in combat. In the film, virtual reality is used to aid the soldiers in telling their stories. There is no indication that the French army actually makes use of VR in their decompression sessions.

The difficulties of readjusting to normal existence after combat are effectively illustrated by Aurore and Marine's spontaneous trip into the countryside. The soldiers respond to everything in a combative way. There are subtle differences in the ways each of them expresses their acquired pugnacity, but they all have a need for an enemy.

Three animals, a dog, a goat, and a pet snake appear in the film. Ness (Jérémie Laheurte) is a dog handler, and Aurore describes in some detail how he reacted to his animal being blown up. (We see no blood and gore in Voir du pays, only the psychological consequences of it.) Ness stares wistfully at two things. The first is the hotel pianist (Zoe Kokkala), and the second is a dog belonging to one of the tourists at the hotel as it runs through the lobby. Marine brings her snake with her concealed in a sock. While driving through the Cyprus mountains, the soldiers hit and kill a goat. The death of the goat causes Marine to release her pet snake into the wild, metaphorically putting Afganistan behind her. Aurore tells Marine on the plane ride back to France that the army is not for her. That she will find something else to do.

Soko as Marine in Voir du pays
Marine with snake

Some things are left unresolved. The first is Ness's longing glance at the hotel pianist. (We never see or hear anything of her again.) The other is the rifle in the trunk of the Cypriot's car. We are shown the rifle, and expect someone to do something with it at some point, but that never happens.

SOUNDTRACK

  1. Welcome to Greece - Maraveyas ilegál
  2. Ask Me Na Bo - Maraveyas ilegál
  3. Lola - Maraveyas ilegál
  4. Smyrneiko Minore - Marika Papagika
  5. Akou Me - Zol Kouroukli and the Stormies
  6. Rabbits in a Hurry - Superpitcher
  7. Mozart (Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major) - Zoe Kokkala
  8. The Keeper - Bonobo featuring Andrea Triana
  9. Heart Beating - Ann Alexander Thweatt, Sébastien Devaud & Amélie Bouard
  10. Surf - Curtis Harding
  11. Noirse - Petite Noir
  12. Slow Coming - Benjamin Booker
  13. Adieu vieille Europe - Simon De Lyon
  14. To Nick - Nadim Mishlawi
  15. Fire With Fire - Gossip

The website of the Frence Ministry of Defense once had the following reference to an incident in the Mobayan village area in Kapisa, which sounds much like the one experienced by the film's charcters. The description is no longer on the site. It read: "On Wednesday, 7 September 2011, units of the Afghan National Army were engaged in an area control operation in the Mobayan village area in Kapisa, with French units in support. In the morning, French units were violently attacked several times as they supported the disengagement of Afghan units. During the fighting, a French soldier was killed and several others wounded: one is severely injured, two others are seriously injured and others are slightly affected and have been treated on FOB Tagab."

Delphine Coulin's book, on which the film is based, is now available (in French) in a Kindle edition and as a mass market paperback from Amazon.

VOIR DU PAYS is available on DVD, and on Amazon Prime Video.

CAST

TOURISTS: Corine Mesnil, Alain Gitte
SOLDIERS: Kevin Delta, Yves Francillette, Aurélien Roger, Christophe Saulnier

TRAILER

Voir du pays video thumb
The Stopover - poster