London River

LONDON RIVER (DVD)
Trinity

Release date: October 11th, 2010
Certificate (UK): 12
Running time: 83 minutes

Year of production: 2009

Director: Rachid Bouchareb
Writers: Rachid Bouchareb, Zoe Galeron, Olivier Lorelle

Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Sotigui Kouyate

My Piccadilly Line train arrived at Holborn Station around 8:40am, allowing me just enough time to rush in to work. I would have been later but we missed a couple of stops on the way. It didn’t strike me as odd, not until much later that day.

As I settled in at my desk, ready to start checking emails and taking calls, the television screens behind me began reporting the news, first of a power outage on the London underground network, and then of bombs going off. It was 8:55am, July 7th, 2005.

I remember the moment I came out of my office and looked down the road at where one of the trains and the number 30 bus blew up. Sirens blared, police cars, vans and ambulances sped past. People ran, phones in hand, nothing worked as the networks went down as well. I’d just gone past there and it was really the first time in my life I looked at something and said to myself “I was lucky”.

52 people died and 700 were left injured.

Rachid Bouchareb, a French film director of Algerian descent, uses the aftermath of the bombings that morning to tell the story of widow and mother, Elisabeth (Brenda Blethyn), who lives in Guernsey and fears that her daughter in London is among the missing or dead, having not heard from her. Frantic with worry, Elisabeth goes in search of her and that’s when she meets Ousmane (Sotigui Kouyate), a French-African Muslim who’s looking for his son.

Rather than focusing on the bombings, the culprits or using London River to ask some key questions surrounding events that day, Bouchareb stays with Elisabeth and lets us explore what it’s like to be a family member searching for a loved one under such circumstances.

In doing so, we come to learn more about a woman who hasn’t experienced much of what it’s like to live in multi-cultural Britain and in some ways we see her reluctance and slight tendency towards xenophobia as she encounters people of all walks of life who have been affected by this act of mass murder.

In choosing to highlight the mistrust between nationalities and faiths, does Bouchareb sidetrack some of the other issues here?

The complex nature of the events that took place on July 7th makes for a tapestry of stories to be told in the tragedy left in its wake, but what comes across here is very difficult to relate to as the main characters are outsiders looking in but not really grasping the bigger picture.

London River, as a result, fails to add a credible voice in reaction to terrorism and, as with the September 11th attacks, the failings of authorities not only to act on intelligence but to provide the public with a sufficient account of how it was allowed to happen, without insulting our intelligence.

As someone who was lucky enough to not have been running late that morning and who saw some of the devastation caused by these callous acts, London River, like the Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London published by the Home Office in May 2006, takes every opportunity to substitute real hard facts and questions for speculation, stereotyping and misplaced melodrama.

Patrick Samuel

The founder of Static Mass Emporium and one of its Editors in Chief is a composer and music producer with a philosophy degree. Static Mass is where he lives his passion for film and writing about it. A fan of film classics, documentaries and World Cinema, Patrick prefers films with an impeccable way of storytelling that reflect on the human condition.

You can find his music on Soundcloud .

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