In the culture-clash comedy “Meet the Barbarians,” actor-director Julie Delpy lays bare a number of Western hypocrisies. The film follows several townspeople in the struggling French commune of Paimpont, who vote to welcome a handful of Ukrainian refugees, but are caught by surprise when a Syrian family shows up instead. The ensuing response runs the gamut from clumsy to hostile, which Delpy captures by applying a documentary-like lens to the town’s fabric, and to their Arab guests. The result is a movie that, though it never quite achieves the dramatic highs for which it aspires, proves eye-wateringly funny.
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The film flies out the gate with an energy reminiscent of “The Office,” as bumbling mayor Sébastien Lejeune (Jean-Charles Clichet) regales a TV news crew with his plans to welcome a Ukrainian family. The city council votes overwhelmingly in favor. Even potential holdout Hervé Riou (Laurent Lafitte), the sour-faced town plumber, gives in after a slight nudge from his peers. A number of local interviews paint the issue of Russia’s invasion, and of welcoming Ukrainians with open arms, as one generally agreed upon, despite the fears and economic reservations folks like Hervé might harbor. However, these doubts come bubbling back to the surface when the town learns of the administrative switcheroo.
The bits of “Meet the Barbarians” shot by TV cameras are differentiated from the rest of the movie by news chyrons, as well as by a smaller frame. However, even its non-mockumentary, narrative segments feature a similar visual approach, one reminiscent of Michael Winterbottom’s “The Trip” series, wherein the movie’s subjects are still performing to a degree, even when they aren’t being interviewed. Lejeune, for instance, is deeply concerned with the optics of accepting refugees, and wants to ensure the most welcoming atmosphere, if only to retain political cachet. Upon finding out that Ukrainians are being welcomed en masse across Europe, he seems let down that Paimpont won’t receive their own members of this valuable commodity. Deply’s character, the progressive schoolteacher Joëlle, helps organize the refugees’ arrival, but is similarly prone to fumbling displays of outward acceptance.
The aforementioned Syrian family, the Fayads, are for the most presented unremarkably, though this is part of Deply’s point. Architect father Marwan (Ziad Bakri), his graphic designer wife Louna (Dalia Naous), her grumpy father Hassan (Farès Helou), their school-aged kids Dina (Ninar) and Waël (Adam), and their doctor aunt Alma (Rita Hayek) are simply too exhausted from their time in refugee camps (where they learned French) to worry about how each Paimpont resident feels about them. However, they do their best to put roots down and become part of the community, which entails taking up odd jobs here and there, since their degrees aren’t valid in France, or were quite literally destroyed, along with their home in Damascus.
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Although we’re offered hints of the Fayads’ inner lives and their desires, “Meet the Barbarians” unfortunately deploys them much as the town’s politicians do, first and foremost as a political entity in order to make a larger argument. However, that argument is strong and introspective, revealing two primary factions that define much of the Western discourse surrounding the subject of refugeeism. There are the likes of Joëlle and her constantly-inebriated best friend Anne (Sandrine Kiberlain), whose well-intentioned liberal politics still come laced with orientalism. And then there are the likes of Hervé and Anne’s convenience store owner husband Philippe (Mathieu Demy), whose approach to all things Muslim and Arab is far more suspicious and hostile.
In what is perhaps the movie’s biggest strength, Delpy presents these apparent opposites as two sides of the very same coin, whose respective approaches stem from the same wellspring of prejudice and misunderstanding, even though they manifest differently. More serious contemporary films have touched on the harrowing aspects of the refugee experience, like Ken Loach’s “The Old Oak” and Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border” (the latter even hints at the same double-standard at which Delpy takes aim, wherein white refugees are more readily welcomed than their Middle Eastern counterparts), but as a comedy, “Meet the Barbarians” can afford to be more granular in its approach.
Although the Fayads face hardship — including a greater barrier to empathy, since they usually have to prove their traumas in some fashion — theirs is thankfully no longer a story of life and death. This allows the film to zero in on the minutiae and the annoying red tape of their experience, and the minor tensions that arise when a perceived unfamiliarity is thrust into a small-town spotlight. It’s a bright, sunny and immaculately entertaining story, despite its dark corners. However, Delpy never loses sight of the bigger picture, offering constant clues that the world continues to be harsh for Muslim refugees even outside this one hilarious story.
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