Un ange à la mer (2009)

It tells the story of Louis, a 12-year-old boy who lives with his older brother and parents in Sidi Ifni, a small town on Morocco’s southern coast, beside the ocean. He is a happy child until the day his manic-depressive father calls him into his office to reveal a secret: his intention to take his own life. The revelation will leave Louis deeply shaken. The secret is revealed in the film’s opening minutes. The child will tell no one and will carry it with him to the end. The cheerfulness of the beginning gives way to anxiety, as in the poem from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, which runs through the film: “Angel full of gaiety, do you know anxiety, Shame, remorse, sobs, troubles, And the vague terrors of those dreadful nights That crush the heart like paper being crumpled? Angel full of gaiety, do you know anxiety?” The announced suicide secret seems, at first glance, to be the film’s main theme. But it is also an allegory that subtly explores the passage from childhood to adulthood, as the parent’s responsibility for the child shifts into the child’s responsibility for the parent.