Tea in Archimedes' harem

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Movie
German title Tea in Archimedes' harem
Original title Le Thé au harem d'Archimède
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1985
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Mehdi Charef
script Mehdi Charef
production Michèle Ray-Gavras
music Karim Kacel
camera Dominique Chapuis
cut Kenout Peltier
occupation

Tea in the Harem is a French film from the year 1985 . Director Mehdi Charef adapted his own novel about the life of two young people in the Parisian suburbs, the banlieues.

action

The youngsters Pat and Madjid live in the dreary banlieues of the French capital. You are 17 years old, without a school leaving certificate and unemployed. Further training opportunities fail at Pat due to his lack of interest. The Arab-born Madjid would like to become a driving instructor, but is faced with a racist clerk at the employment office who only wants to place him if he is French . Both of them stay afloat as petty criminals with fraud, pimping, theft and robbery and otherwise spend their days aimlessly.

Pat has run away from home, lives with friends in the basements of the skyscrapers and has come to terms with his fate. Madjid lives with his large family, in which his mother has numerous jobs, while the father is traumatized and no longer speaks. He is in love with Pat's sister Chantal, who pretends to work as a secretary but actually makes her living as a prostitute.

A number of characters settle around the two of them, all of whom are suffering from their current lives. There is a drug addict who never leaves his bed, Madjid's alcoholic neighbor who beats his wife, the always drunk prostitute who leaves her child unsupervised on the playground to buy from the immigrants, and the unemployed woman who gives her Leaves child with Madjid's mother during the day and almost commits suicide.

When fat Balou, who used to be ridiculed by others and ran away, returns as a rich man in his American sleigh - presumably as a criminal - Pat in particular draws hope that things could change and that there is hope for him. Then the two friends steal a car that they all want to use to go to the sea to escape their everyday lives. There on the beach they only experience a brief moment of happiness. Police cars appear and Madjid, realizing the illusion his friends are indulging in, is arrested.

When the police car drives away, Pat, who previously fled and saw the arrest from a distance, is standing on the side of the road. The car reaches him and Pat raises his arm like a hitchhiker to get in next to his friend.

title

The title results from a misunderstanding in the physics lesson. Balou should write “le théorème d'Archimède”, Archimedes' sentence about the buoyancy of heavy bodies in water, on the blackboard. Lost in his Arab world of thought, he instead wrote the homophonic term "le Thé au harem d'Archimède" ("Tea in Archimedes' harem") and received a slap in the face from the teacher.

reception

"Social realism and dreams combine to create a perfectly staged film in the tradition of the subject's classics."

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

At the Cannes Film Festival in 1985 the film won the “Prize for French Young Cinema”.

In the same year he also received the most important French award in independent cinema , the Jean Vigo Prize .

In 1986 Charef won the César for Best First Work , and the film poster was also awarded. Kader Boukhanef was nominated for Best Young Actor.

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tea in Archimedes' harem. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 4, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ DER SPIEGEL 52/1985 of December 23, 1985: A thousand and one nights. "Tea in the Harem of Archimedes", the debut film by the Parisian worker Mehdi Charef, is one of the most successful cult films of the year.

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