Do not search anymore. The French Martin Luther King is him. Or in any case, who "JP" would like to be. This failed actor and controversial Youtubeur is "angry" . He deplores the absence of the "black man" from the great French novel and intends to make this known by organizing a black protest march in Paris.
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For its theatrical release this Wednesday, the fake documentary Simply Black by Jean-Pascal Zadi and John Wax finds a strange resonance with current events, in particular the police murder of George Floyd or the recent demonstrations for Adama Traoré. Her film was shot long before. But, Zadi "has some pif" , he warns in one of the sequences of this film where he interprets an extreme version of himself. He also has talent.
"Simply black is the best, and funniest, critic of communitarianism in these times when Black Lives Matter crosses borders and agitates French society" , notes the critic of Figaro Étienne Sorin.
"It's not nothing that Zadi succeeds in doing , " enthuses Liberation . By summoning black celebrities like Fary, Fabrice Éboué, Claudia Tagbo, Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Omar Sy or JoeyStarr, Zadi gives “ an appointment to the comedy of minorities so that it looks at itself and revisits its history and its golden trajectories , his victories as his aporias ". And even the many "subversions that this film with the logo of a major (...) allows itself never dull his intelligence" , add our colleagues.
It is this same quality that the journalist Jacques Mandelbaum salutes in Le Monde , praising "the quality of the writing, the ambiguity of the mise en abyme while each plays his own role" and "the corrosive spirit that prevails over its passage both the real racism of society and the hypocrisy of the communitarian discourse which responds to it ” . For Théo Ribeton of the Inrocks , "the terrain is slippery, but Zadi goes head first to expunge a whole bad community conscience, a whole repressed, in a way that is both wild and controlled, indecent and very just" .
"As protected by his absurd humor, he energizes the politically correct to question the complexity of the French black identity and the intimate springs of activism, to denounce communitarianism" , adds Eric Mandel in Le Journal du Dimanche . Result? His comedy "fueled by the blink of an eye, second degree and self-mockery to try, despite everything, to talk about a jarring subject:" the invisibility "of blacks in the cinema industry and French society, ” notes Pierre Lunn in Première magazine .
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Simply black is "a laughing lesson in mental health in a time of hysterical conspiracy and victim competition , " observes Fabrice Pliskin in L'Obs . Simon Riaux sees it “a fascinating portrait of France in the midst of identity introspection” , in Bande Large . In short, "often hilarious and simply invigorating" for Paris Match, this comedy is "simply funny" , concludes Le Point .