I’ve known the name of Yann Demange ever since I watched ’71, the fantastic 2014 British thriller focusing on the riots in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The film took time to grow on me, and a decade later, I can say it’s one of my most favorite films ever. However, despite my familiarity with his work (’71 and the 2018 Matthew McConaughey starrer White Boy Rick, which I didn’t quite dig), I had zero idea about Demange’s Algerian heritage and his life outside his work. In his latest, Dammi, we get a slice of that. Demange’s film may just be clocking in at eighteen minutes, but it still packs a lot of punch. In this article, we’re going to look into what happens in this short film before forming some thoughts on it.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens in the Short?
There’s barely any narrative in Dammi. I mean, it does have a beginning and ending that appear to be cohesive, but whatever happens in the middle is mainly introspection and rummaging through memories in search of an answer. What’s the question here, then? That would be, where does Mounir belong? He’s a Londoner who keeps coming back to the city of Paris again and again. Dammi begins by dropping us into the middle of a Parisian street as Mounir starts narrating how he always visits Paris to seek an origin story (and never succeeds). It soon moves into surrealist territory, but you can make out some of it. Mounir is originally of Algerian origin, courtesy of his father, who moved to Paris back in the 1960s. We get to know that he changed his name to Joe in order to blend in, and he worked as a doorman. While Mounir visits his father in the city, he always has his mother in mind. She was a blonde woman who came to Paris when she was 16, and by the age of nineteen, she was pregnant. Unlike Mounir, she doesn’t ever want to visit the city, and he doesn’t know the reason. Mounir also mentions that he has two brothers. All three of them have different fathers. His mother happened to leave Paris years ago with Mounir and one of his brothers, leaving another brother behind. However, we don’t get to know anything about the other brother. That’s not the point of this story, anyway.
Does Mounir ever find what he was looking for?
At a party, Mounir bumps into Hafzia. She also comes from an Algerian background, but unlike Mounir, she seems at home in Paris. Dammi starts using Hafzia as its narrator as well, along with Mounir. While he does it in English, she does it in her impeccable French. It’s quite evident that these two are into each other, and thanks to Riz Ahmed and Souheila Yacoub’s organic chemistry, you don’t have a problem buying it either, even though there’s hardly any words being exchanged between them. However, Mounir’s inner turmoil goes on, and it affects his relationship with Hafzia as well. He does acknowledge the fact that, after meeting her, Paris has become meaningful for him. She’s now the one who defines the city for him. But unlike her, he still doesn’t seem to belong here and can’t help but identify himself as a fake. This obviously means that despite feeling at home in London, Mounir suffers from an identity crisis, and that’s his main reason for coming back to Paris. His major fault in the relationship has to be trying to seek himself in Hafzia, like a reflection in the mirror. He understandably fails, and frustration gets the better of him. Hafzia, on the other hand, confesses that she’s both scared and angry, but what she intends is to channel those feelings and reach somewhere. She tells him to turn the shame of not belonging into a form of pride. Is he able to do that? If we go by the final scene of Dammi, then it can be concluded that he succeeds. We see Mounir literally getting out of a manhole, all soaked in water. In the streets of Paris on a gloomy day, he sees Hafzia again. She’s looking as disheveled as him. The two hug, and Demange decides to call it a show there.
Coming back to the original (and only question), I feel what the director tried to show here is a journey where he finally comes to a point of acceptance. And also a new realization: Mounir and Hafzia belong to each other, and together they somewhat solve each other’s crises. I understand this is rather a simplistic explanation, and I might be entirely wrong here. Dammi is a deeply personal story that can be interpreted in many ways, after all.
Final Thoughts
Before going into that, let me just give a round of applause to Demmagne for randomly throwing an Isabella Adjani at us for no particular reason. Adjani plays a singer at a Paris nightclub Mounir visits, and that’s about it. Now, the term “hot garbage” is widely popular these days when it comes to film critique, and I can see a lot of people casually throwing it at Dammi. It would be a lie if I say this short doesn’t come off as a person trying to tell a story that is so full of itself. There obviously isn’t much explanation, and Demmagne has to depend a lot on his images and his performers, Ahmed and Yacoub. The short predominantly works because of how good these actors are, especially Ahmed, who just happens to have the talent of telling you so much through his face alone. Ahmed makes sure that he plays Mounir with constant despair and helplessness on his face, until the final scene, where he seems to find some sort of peace. Dammi is a tiny showreel of what a talented actor this guy is and why he should be celebrated even more.
My biggest cause of skepticism for these personal stories has to be not fully being able to understand them by myself, thanks to their zero relatability. But I’ve got to say Dammi pretty much worked for me. Yes, Riz Ahmed’s performance has to be the main deal here, but Demange’s directorial abilities and his hold over the craft are also on full display. It’s really nice to see him working after so long and showing the courage to tell his own life story in this form. I can’t wait to see what he does with his next MCU film, Blade, which is certainly going to be the biggest film of his career so far.
