Cult: Would we finally realize the invisible too?

More than a million and a half have seen it presented in France in 2018 Unseen , which now reaches Hungarian viewers on a special platform but works well. The screening on Budapest Television really begins when we change the tickets, the movie can’t be stopped, which can certainly be annoying in the Netflix era, but only the lack of this control gives you here and now cinema experience. Unseen and luckily it really is an experience, and not just anyone.

Louis-Julien Petit (The discount) focuses on a daytime heater reserved for women. At the center, struggling, mostly homeless women can take a break and do some practical things: showering, eating, recharging their phones, accessing newspapers, and getting help finding a job. To guarantee their anonymity, they use pseudonyms to log into the center under the names of Brigitte Macron, Cicciolina, Salma Hayek, Lady Di and Beyoncé, among others.

However, at six in the afternoon, the heater closes its doors, so anyone who has been there during the day should look for accommodation. The obstacles in front of them are also familiar in Hungary: the authorities cut the benches of the local parks in half with an armrest, and in front of the shops they try to keep homeless people away with cutting-edge architectural solutions, for what some of them hide in a suburban shopping city.

Desperate social workers know for sure that they don’t do much with daycare, but due to system operational problems, their hands are completely tied. When they try to get a job for their clients, they run into a number of problems: one of them, for example, worked just one day at a real estate agency, and another woman did a great job repairing anything, but almost every Employers or private houses almost compulsively speak of this ability. He put her in jail, where she went because she killed the abusive husband.

Louis-Julien Petit used valuable raw materials to make his film, Claire Lajeunie walked the streets for months to write On the invisible route: Femmes dans la rue (not published in Hungarian, but in free translation Path to the invisible: women on the street). For the sake of credibility, the director only looked for actresses for the role of social workers (Audrey Lamy, Corinne Masiero, Noémie Lvovsky and Déborah Lukumuena), the women who return to shelters and force them to go outside are actually played by current or former homeless people, and their stories are sometimes included in the film. the woman released from prison, for example, appears as Chantal in the film, but Adolpha Van Meerhaeghe actually killed her husband.)

The film reveals serious deficiencies and problems in the care system: social workers are accused by their superiors of being too pampered, too friendly with those who turn to them, they return again and again, and then at one point, claiming that only four percent of the women managed to reintegrate: they decide not to pay more for a center that cannot show any results.

Determined social workers choose to continue their activities illegally, crossing borders entirely, turning women into permanent accommodation in the guise of the night, giving them the opportunity to “learn about the world of work.” Social workers sometimes use fun tools, including therapy and situational sessions, to help residents who are not infrequently traumatized repeatedly, have communication problems, and often lack self-confidence to acquire the skills to apply for a job and convince them that they recognize their own dignity. Because they have not only their past and present, but also their future, and with zero self-esteem it is an inability to look to the future.

Unseen It’s also a success because it’s not just about the homeless people left behind, but also the social workers: terribly underpaid, terribly tired of system failure, lack of esteem, and having to resort to absolutely illegal means to get real help. “I help them and I see, neither my boyfriend, nor my money, nor my life”, one of them explodes in an instant.

And in fact, what could their lives be like if they also had to constantly ask for help from their environment (not the system, their environment): a good friend from the junkyard had to be persuaded to give away some televisions and microphones, the Family members sometimes get together when a customer goes missing, and acquaintances write letters of recommendation to homeless people here and there. Therefore, it takes a wide network of contacts to go from one to two. But they make it, even if the road is hellishly winding, there are times in this job that get the people who work on it out of the well over and over again.

Anyway, Petit’s film is a comedy, and one can laugh at it with good taste: the director’s intention was to always be with the characters and not laugh at them, Unseen and he never crosses a line: he is always humble, always supportive, he never looks down from above. At some point, though, he doesn’t feel the balance between drama and comedy: Some unnecessary secondary threads (like a girl’s request from one of his social worker brothers) just take the edge of bitterness, but it’s not interesting enough like to connect.

However, in some moments, with the help of impact search tools, Petit plays with our hearts in such a way that we would like to sob out loud, which, after all, is not a problem in a remote cinema. Unseen It tells a story worth paying attention to, and Petit, even in a terribly desperate situation, says goodbye to his viewers just as his characters do. With his head raised, with dignity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIcirveOmDI

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