” We are us because of us “, explains Michel Pinçon-Charlot in the documentary by Basile Carré-Agostini. In their romantic and intellectual journey, Michel and Monique are inseparable, like two strands of the same thread. In their social and political commitment – to the full left – now too and this is what the film which comes out this Wednesday March 9 on screens in France tells.
” When is the next protest? asks Monique Pinçon-Charlot. It is dark, the camera has invited itself into the bedroom of the famous couple of sociologists, Monique and Michel Pinçon-Charlot. They have made a specialty of the French elites, of the upper middle class like the Rothschild dynasty (“ one of my favorite books ” confides Monique Pinçon-Charlot), a closed and little explored sociological territory, have worked on social reproduction, the relationships of domination and the spatial distribution of the “rich”, their leisure activities such as hunting, etc. Surveys that have yielded many books, some of which have been bestsellers such as The Ghettos of Gotha (2006) or The president of the rich, investigates the oligarchy in Nicolas Sarkozy’s France (2007).
Moniquette and Michelou
” Everything higher in human life, every effort of thought, every effort of love is corrosive to order. “. This sentence attributed to Simone Weil opens the film: it is the story of a loving, intellectual and political complicity. Both have always worked with four hands, side by side. The friendly camera of Basile Carré-Agostini, for whom this is his first feature film as a director, follows them as closely as possible, from the bedroom to the kitchen, from the bathroom to the dining room table, covered with newspapers, from their suburban Parisian pavilion. In the gestures of daily life, a thousand leagues away from the gold and splendor of their subjects of study. They are then Moniquette and Michelou, like the inscriptions on their breakfast bowls, the blurred eyes on waking, when Madame cheers Monsieur who drops the crumbs of his bread on the ground.
A daily newspaper that goes through the Fête de l’Humanité box, through demonstrations (it’s the time of the Yellow Vests, the Macron government’s pension reform and then support for caregivers in the spring of 2021), support for occupations of industrial sites like Ford in Bordeaux alongside Philippe Poutou, one of the 12 candidates for the next presidential election, who was fired in the summer of 2019 when the factory closed, meetings with high school students from the suburbs exploring in the very chic avenue Montaigne in Paris. A kind of nature class discovering the “symbolic violence” theorized by Pierre Bourdieu. Of theory in this film, there is no question even if the two characters are often immersed in their readings. They moved on to practice, to struggle in the streets or in the factories. This is why the film passes over in silence the criticisms addressed to them on their work as sociologists since their political involvement or even the controversy aroused by Comments by Monique Pinçon-Charlot that she said she regretted since…
The duty of reserve to the nettles
They left the CNRS, where they worked as research directors, in 2007, but still work and write. Simply, as they explain to one of their object of study and guest at lunch, Denis de Kergorlay, they have since freed themselves from the duty of reserve that scientists must impose on themselves. ” You got pretty violent “, points out the guest, who is in civilian life president of the Cercle de l’union interalliée, a club whose members ” embody, each in their own way, a certain image of success and good manners “, he explains in an interview with the Figaro. A duty of reserve clearly thrown to the nettles. The aristocracy of the Old Regime was eliminated by the French Revolution but it was replaced by an aristocracy of money which must also be rid of, asserts Michel Pinçon-Charlot to Philippe Poutou.
Michel writes and Monique speaks. To her the verb (“ she writes like a potato mocks her husband) and his pen. She explains to Yellow Vests how not to let themselves be taken down by journalists on a TV set (” watch dogs she says, with a nod to Paul Nizan and Serge Halimi), but in the demonstrations, it is she who takes notes in her large notebook, questions the demonstrators, copies the slogans tagged on the walls, ” We want to leave you your dough, we just want everything else “. Normal people have no idea what a rich person is, the economist explained earlier in the film. Liêm Hoang Ngoc – also ranked left – by giving the couple a lesson in taxation.
” Sociology is a combat sport »
It’s the story of an elderly couple who dream of brighter tomorrows. ” If there isn’t a profound revolution, future generations won’t know the happiness we’ve experienced, of loving each other, all that “says Monique Pinçon-Charlot. An enthusiasm showered by his last interlocutor, a taxi driver of African origin, ” revolution? There is no revolution, you have to stop dreaming... »