The title of 24 year old Majid Ammam’s feature film, A.U.D. could stand for many things. The film suggests some of them. One possibility is Anatomy of Bereavement. The one meaning that the film never mentions, but which is most common and most appropriate is Alcohol Use Disorder. And the film delivers on that grim promise in a big way. This film is beautifully shot, always entertaining. But most of all, this is a heartbreaking film.
A.U.D. follows Kahil, a 23 year old as he drifts through alcoholic days and nights. He’s accompanied by a narrator who, like the narrator in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, is sort of a character in the story. She tells us a bit about Kahil’s situation, but omits the most important fact: Kahil has suffered a terrible loss and, despite his youth, he cannot seem to get past it. His name. Kahil Bellami, is worth exploring more. The name Kahil is of Arabic origin and means ‘friend’ or ‘best friend.’ And his last name, of course is French for good friend. So despite being alone with few friends and no family, Kahil’s role is to be a friend. We soon meet his only real friend in the person of Léon. Léon is a few decades older than Kahil, but they’ve both found themselves at the same bar drowning their sorrows. We soon learn that Léon has suffered a loss like that of Kahil. And what makes matters worse is that Léon’s marriage is on the verge of falling apart.
After a couple of brusque encounters, the two learn about the similarities in their situation. They form a bond and try to help each other out of each other’s predicaments.
The film is peppered with various quotes from well-known figures. These seem to demarcate chapter breaks in the film. We hear from Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius and others. The quotes give this thought provoking film a philosophical atmosphere. I found myself watching and trying to figure out how the plot related to the notion that, “The effects of anger are worse than their cause.”
At the heart of the film are several difficult and perhaps unanswerable questions. Can people really change? Can alcoholics pull themselves up from the bottom? Is their a point at which you’ve screwed up your life so badly that you can never recover? What is the relationship between personality and alcohol abuse? These questions will be bouncing around in your head for a long time after watching this. Not every detail in the film is realistic. But the passion of the director, the writer and the actors is so powerful that all we can follow is the emotional arc of the film. There are superb performances here from the two leads, Lucas Rouger as Kahil and Frédérik Del Monte as Léon. As mentioned the photography here never leaves the eye bored.
In the end of A.U.D., Léon’s character turns out to be more interesting than Kahlil’s. Kahil is, no matter what, a young man with his whole life ahead of him. Léon, on the other hand, has had many more years to make many more mistakes. It’s clear that he was once subject to a blinding professional ambition that drove a wedge between him and his family, and perhaps also drove him to the bottle. So although the film begins by focusing on Kahil, I was much more interested in what was going to happen to Léon by the end. And indeed, A.U.D. does spend more time with him towards the end.
Is this a pessimistic film? I do not believe so. It seems to me that we can see where some obvious mistakes were made by the characters and I think as an audience we think that we would be able to dodge these situations. So the film is much more of a cautionary tale with a paradoxically subtle layer of hope.
But the overwhelming emotion that comes through here is a profound sadness. Sadness at the wasted potential claimed by alcoholism. There is a dedication at the end of the film, and although the details aren’t made explicit, the strong suggestion is that 24 year old Ammam’s situation is quite similar to that of Kahil.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.