User Score
7 votes
August in Paris' suburbs, seven friends are gathered to spend a week in the city where they grew up. The city is empty and the days pass by under a deep blue sky. Each of them has a reason to be there: some still live there, some come back to see their family, some are searching their childhood, some want to escape boredom or eventually searching for love. They are all bearing the fact that these moments they are sharing are maybe the last ones.
Status
Released
Original Language
FR
Raphaël
Roughly chronological, from 3/96 to 11/96, with a coda in spring of 1997: inside compounds of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist sect led by Shoko Asahara. (Members confessed to a murderous sarin attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995.) We see what they eat, where they sleep, and how they respond to media scrutiny, on-going trials, the shrinking of their fortunes, and the criticism of society. Central focus is placed on Hiroshi Araki, a young man who finds himself elevated to chief spokesman for Aum after its leaders are arrested. Araki faces extreme hostility from the Japanese public, who find it hard to believe that most followers of the cult had no idea of the attacks and even harder to understand why these followers remain devoted to the religion, if not the violence.
