Easy Raver
On paper, Sirât may feel unsettling, since its approach appears to be little more than a collage of prestige references. The way it films the Moroccan desert as an apocalypse filled with vehicles undeniably calls to mind Mad Max. The danger of the landscape and the driving within it evokes The Wages of Fear, while the creeping madness that takes hold of the characters feeds off its William Friedkin remake, Sorcerer.
Throw in a dash of the existential wandering found in Gus Van Sant’s Gerry, and a touch of Jodorowsky for absurdity, and you have a combo that could easily taste like a stomachache. Miraculously, it’s quite the opposite, perhaps because Oliver Laxe isn’t chasing a mash-up of influences as much as the ruptures and transitions between movements in a single score shifting from one mood to another.
After all, the sirât in the title is, in Islam, a bridge that connects hell and heaven, the final passage between two dimensions, death before death. This purgatory, this hypnotic in-between, the film establishes from its masterful opening sequence, where rows of loudspeakers are set up before pulsing with techno.
Amid the dancing crowd, dust and sweat coating everyone, there is no tomorrow—only penetrating bass and violent percussion. As light projections overlay the mountains, one also notices that the film’s signature grain seems to materialize the music’s vibrations, the ones the body feels in a purely visceral way.
But can one really surrender and forget everything? Oliver Laxe initially seems to answer in the affirmative by presenting some of his characters, a crew of freaks—mostly portrayed by non-professional actors—some of whom are maimed. While they’ve left behind a part of themselves, Luis (Sergi Lopez) arrives with his son Esteban at this rave party in the middle of nowhere, in search of his missing daughter. They too have lost a part of themselves, which they try to recover by sharing her photo.
Beyond Technodome
In this edge-of-the-world, timeless corner, there remains a connection to reality and to family that won’t stop catching up with this wayward crew. Soldiers arrive to wrap up the festivities, and Luis decides to follow his new party-going friends, in search of another night where his child might be found.
From there, it’s clear that this starting point is little more than a pretext, gradually abandoned as the journey slides into the edges of psychedelia and dreamlike imagery. Once Luis’s car—hardly suited for such a trip—manages to cross a river as if crossing the Styx, Sirât drifts through a road trip packed with surprises. It would be criminal to spoil the plot’s moves, but suffice to say we hadn’t seen a Cannes press screening react this way in a long time. By turning this hostile, lonely Morocco into an emptiness where everyone projects their fears, Sirât cannot help but be haunted by death.
The characters’ radios broadcast word of wartime developments. The specific nations aren’t named, but the course of the conflict hints at the looming arrival of a Third World War. While the world of partying tries only to flee the horror of reality and the dread of our own annihilation—be it military or ecological—Oliver Laxe injects a macabre note, like a hunted animal returning at full gallop.
This gives his striking proposition a sly, mischievous dark humor, but also a nerve-wrenching sense of suspense. Everything falls apart around the protagonists, yet the weight of the body, its sensitivity, remains to be heard. In Sirât, there is the era’s ferment—the anxieties and the urge to let go—synthesized in a way that is at once concrete and abstract through its growing absurdity. You can choose to close your eyes and shield yourself from hell… until it catches up with you.
We are ready to present the rewritten article in English.
