In her culture-clash comedy, Meet the Barbarians, actress-director Julie Delpy exposes a number of Western hypocrisies. The film follows several residents of the struggling French town of Pimbont, who vote to welcome a few Ukrainian refugees, only to be surprised when a Syrian family shows up instead. The ensuing response ranges from clumsy to hostile, which Delpy captures by applying a documentary-like lens to the fabric of the town and its Arab guests. The result is a film that, while never quite achieving the dramatic heights it aspires to, proves to be very funny.
The film begins with a liveliness reminiscent of “The Office,” as the town’s bumbling mayor, Sébastien Lejeune (Jean-Charles Cliche), tells a TV news crew about his plans to take in a Ukrainian family. The city council votes overwhelmingly in favor of the plan. Even plumber Hervé Rioux (Laurent Lafitte), who might have been reluctant to accept the idea, caves after a slight nudge from his peers. A series of local interviews make the case for a Russian invasion, and the Ukrainians are welcomed with open arms, everyone agrees, despite the economic concerns and reservations that people like Hervé may have. However, those doubts resurface when the town learns of the administrative change.
The TV-cameraed scenes in Encounter the Barbarians are set off from the rest of the film by the news headlines, as well as the smaller frame. Yet even the non-documentary narrative passages have a similar visual approach, one reminiscent of Michael Winterbottom’s The Journey series, where the protagonists are still performing to some extent, even when they are not being interviewed. Lejeune, for example, is deeply concerned about the visual appearance of accepting refugees, and wants to ensure the most welcoming atmosphere possible, if only to maintain political standing. When he learns that Ukrainians are being welcomed in droves across Europe, he seems disappointed that Pimpont will not accept its members of this valuable commodity. Dibley’s character, the progressive teacher Joel, helps organize the refugees’ arrival, but she is also vulnerable to faltering offers of outside acceptance.
The aforementioned Syrian family, the Fayyads, are hardly noticed, though that’s part of Deeply’s point. Their architect father Marwan (Ziad Bakri), his graphic designer wife Luna (Dalia Naous), their angry father Hassan (Fares Helou), their school-age children Dina (Ninar) and Wael (Adam), and their doctor aunt Alma (Rita Hayek), are so exhausted from their time in refugee camps (where they learned French) that they don’t have to worry about how the people of Bimbon feel about them. Still, they do their best to put down roots and become part of the community, which entails taking odd jobs here and there, since their degrees are either invalid in France or have been literally destroyed, along with their home in Damascus.
Although we get glimpses into the inner lives and desires of the Fayyad family, Encounter the Barbarians sadly uses these desires as the town’s politicians do, first and foremost as a political entity to advance a larger argument. But this argument is powerful and profound, revealing two main factions that define much of the Western discourse surrounding the refugee issue. There are the likes of Joelle and her best friend Anne (Sandrine Kiberlain), whose well-meaning liberal politics are still tinged with Eastern biases. Then there are the likes of Hervé and Anne’s grocery store owner husband Philippe (Mathieu Demy), whose approach to all things Muslim and Arab is more suspicious and hostile.
Perhaps the film’s greatest strength is that Delpy presents these two apparent opposites as two sides of the same coin, their approaches stemming from the same source of prejudice and misunderstanding, albeit in different ways. More serious contemporary films have dealt with the horrific aspects of the refugee experience, such as Ken Loach’s Old Oak and Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border (the latter even hints at the same double standard Delpy targets, with white refugees being welcomed more readily than their Middle Eastern counterparts), but as a comedy, Encounter the Barbarians could do with more nuance.
Although the Fayyads face hardships—including a greater barrier to empathy, as they often have to somehow prove their trauma—their story is thankfully not a life-and-death one. This allows the film to focus on the minutiae and the annoying bureaucracy surrounding their experience, and the minor tensions that arise when something unfamiliar is brought to light in a small town. It’s a bright, sunny, and flawlessly entertaining story, despite its dark corners. Yet Delpy never loses sight of the bigger picture, offering constant evidence that the world is still cruel to Muslim refugees even outside of this funny story.
