Robert Guédiguian is known for his social realist portrayal of working-class Marseille. In Don’t Tell Me the Boy Was Mad he reconnects with his roots, exploring the impact the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917 had on the displaced generations throughout the 20th century. The film starts in black-and-white, reporting on the trial of an Armenian national for the assassination of the Turkish ambassador in Germany in 1921. The film turns then to color when it moves on to the end of the 1970s in Marseille. Here we meet a three generation family of Armenian descent. The grandmother keeps reminding of the horror of the genocide and the need for vengeance. Her son-in-law wants to move on with life, but her grandson Aram shares her outrage and joins a radical movement. He is the one that detonates a bomb killing the Turkish ambassador in Paris in 1981. In that explosion an innocent, passing cyclist is heavily injured, losing his ability to use his legs. Aram, deeply regretting the injuries caused to this bystander, has gone to Lebanon for further training. Here he starts to have his first doubts about the violent movement he is a part of. When he hears through his mother that the injured cyclist, whom she has contacted and invited to her home in Marseille, wants to meet him in Beirut, he accepts the invitation.

In Lady Jane similar devastating impacts of vengeance are presented in a completely other context. Here it deals with three school-time friends from a working class neighborhood in Marseille. Growing older they have tried to steer away from crime, but get confronted anew with the past when one of them gets a phone call seeing her son held at gunpoint. Both films make clear that ”the man who seeks vengeance is like a fly banging into the window” and invite us to reflect and discuss the ”door that is wide open” and in which of our relationships might we need to enter through that door.

Rinus Baljeu, Sept 2024

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