The Waterline

In France, individuals facing social distress are welcomed into a support structure providing assistance and emergency accommodation. For them, even a peaceful little town becomes a war zone if there is no shelter, no landmark but the threat of « wolves outside ». They struggle for their survival and dignity, with the help of determined social workers.

The Waterline is assuredly a film by Olivier Zabat. The title, and a discreet insistence on reflections, once again intimate how much his work enjoys edging along the threshold of limbo, while the bleak frontality of each and every shot reminds us of the unshakeable dignity of his gaze. Yet here, even less than in the previous film (Arguments), we find scant trace of the poetic arrangement that was so striking in 1/3 of the Eyes or Fading, as if Zabat’s signature were slowly waning through a sense of modesty and a concern to save all his strength for the crucial imperative for accuracy when portraying human suffering. So, at first sight, The Waterline resembles many other testimonies on social destitution and the efforts of resource-strapped organisations striving to ease it in lieu of the State. But the sensitivity and intractable frankness of Zabat’s gaze reveal with a rare astuteness the gravity of what a disgraceful political jargon decided to dub the “social divide”, and which is in reality a bottomless gulf separating two worlds. One of these worlds has been driven into nothingness by the other yet is still required (when interviewing for wretched jobs) to prove its motivation to live. This is the dark night into which The Waterline plunges, guided by the friendship and admiration rightly inspired by the courage of those who manage to survive there.

Jérôme Momcilovic