"Asphalte" (2015)

Gray concrete, warehouses, empty parking

What is HLM? A big apartment building, situated is some trashy suburban area of the French city, which houses the unemployed, immigrants and other not-so-lucky. If you follow the news, you’d think that HLM is a crime-infected place and sometimes inhabitants of those projects are going to the rich neighborhoods in order to burn cars and destroy some property.

Despite that grim news coverage, you shouldn’t degrade inhabitants of the HLM to merely sociological category. Those projects are inhabited by the people, who feel the same emotions, as everybody else. Almost everyone, including heroes of the film, are experiencing or afraid of loneliness. An aged man, who refused to pay for elevator’s maintenance and who ended up in a wheelchair; a burned-out actress, who moves to HLM; teenager, who lives without parents; an old Arab woman, whose son is in prison.

Loneliness methodically wears down the man and every he loses a bit of life joy. Despite that, in the tales, and sometimes in life, the miracles are happening in the most unusual places. Like an American astronaut makes a crash landing on the HLM’s roof and an old woman would get a substitute son for a few days. Those few days could bring the joy of life to someone and understand the meaning of such words as friendship and mutual help.

«Asphalte» is a kind and positive story, which takes part in the most unusual place. Film goes only for one hour and forty minutes, but the spectator, along with the heroes, feel the same good emotions. I recommend you to watch it, you will not regret this.