‘Nobody’s Hero’ Review: Alain Guiraudie Disappoints With a Scattershot Terrorism Comedy
variety.comGuy Lodge Film CriticAs far-right sentiment surges in France ahead of April’s presidential elections — and lawmakers continue to concern themselves with hijab bans — the time is urgently right for artists to challenge the country’s enduring history of Islamophobia.
On the face of it, “Nobody’s Hero” seems like a useful contribution in that regard. Set amid the tense aftermath of a radical terrorist attack in the placid central French city of Clermont-Ferrand, Alain Guiraudie’s latest feature centers on a weak-willed white man caught between being an ally and an oppressor to a homeless Muslim youth in his neighborhood, wryly commenting on a middle-class society that oscillates between liberal altruism and wary prejudice.
Yet this promising setup is derailed by a separate, not especially complementary narrative detailing the same protagonist’s troubled romance with a married local sex worker: Moonlighting as a broad bedroom farce, this heavily plotted but oddly low-energy film winds up too distracted and diluted to score as a vital political satire.
That “Nobody’s Hero” pulls a number of punches is especially disappointing coming from Guiraudie, whose 2013 breakout feature “Stranger by the Lake” sealed his status as one of contemporary French cinema’s nerviest, most playful provocateurs, before his perverse, surreal 2016 follow-up “Staying Vertical” plunged into wilder territory still.
Read more on variety.com