MON COLONEL

Couragious first film for Laurent Herbiet, the forty-five year-old French director (already the maker of a short length film entitled The feet of heaven ), who decides to bring to the screen the novel of Francis Zamponi, Mon Colonel, using the same title. For this, Herbiet is assisted by Costa-Gavras and Jean-claude Grumberg. They construct a two track narrative which leads the viewer through the Algerian experiences of the young officer Guy Rossi ( well played by Robinson Stevenin) and the investigations of Lieutenent Galois (Cecile de France) who has to investigate the death of ex-Colonel Duplan (Oliver Gourmet) in Paris. After the mysterious murder, Lieutenant Galois comes into possession of the diary of the young officer Guy Rossi, who served under Colonel Duplan during the Algerian War of Independence in 1965. Through this detailed diary, we learn about about the sick relationship that grew up between Colonel and Lieutenant , practically a parable of a reluctant apprenticeship, a summary in first person of the progressive and irreversible surrender of the young Guy Rossi to Duplan his mentor/demon. The hope of the young Guy being able to remain extraneous to what was happening around him, seems to vacilate perilously right from the start. Perhaps it is one of the most interesting aspects of the film, the progressive surrender of a young man facing the "mechanisms" of war. So this is a film on much more than just the impotence of the individual. Mon Colonel sets out to weave a problematical relationship ( through a highly organized narrative ) on what remains of that controversial period in present day France. The characters like Lieutenant Galois first, and then the father of the young officer Rossi ( a Charles Aznavour in top form) tell us that in France today the wish to know about a past that is never quite definitive calmly co-exists with the need to forget what has happened. The human involvement of the lieutenant is, however, accompanied by a real desire to know the truth. Perhaps it is not the case that the clash between the young Galois and the old father of Rossi, can be attributed to a tension between the younger generations in search of a hidden truth, and the "older"generation which wishes or needs to forget what has happened.
Mon Colonel, besides some obvious connections with the present day, constructs a coherent and interesting argument,especially when enquiring into a past controversy. It is obviously a film denouncing torture, but it is also to be welcomed as an attempt to understand our own history. It is an ongoing interrogation conducted through the experiences of the young lieutenant and his colonel.
The murder of Colonel Duplan is due, then, to the impossibility of understanding, to the determination to forget what has happened, and more obviously to the desire to avenge a father, and wounds that have not yet healed. We believe that it is too easy to seek connections with the present though, around us there is no lack of connections to what we see in the film. But Herbiet does not wish to construct any sort of argument about history. It is certainly not his intention to explain why this event took place. He wishes, rather,to speak out, and not to forget (in this sense the father of Rossi and the author share the same feelings) that a young soldier of the war of Algiers who has paid with his life. He has been a spectator of, and accomplice to, a rational system of murder.