« Kneecap », Gaelic your mother – Liberation

At this stage of the championship, everyone and their uncle has an opinion on Kneecap, if not listening to the slightest title. This trio of North Irish hip-hop which recalls in Gaelic, trained in 2017 in the west of Belfast has become inevitable in the United Kingdom thanks to its music (a second album, Fine art, Published last year), its idiomatic exception (which caused a boom from Gaelic lessons), its many provocations (« Brits out », « The English outside », chanted during a concert at the Empire Music Hall in Belfast where Prince William and Kate Middleton had just given a reception) and her true-false Biopic, who tumbled across the Channel last summer, won all the votes (more than 2 million pounds at the Anglo-Irish box office, Bafta for the best first film) and releases this Wednesday in France. A phenomenon that could have been kindly exotic if he hadn’t had An international impact in recent months with a concert at the American Coachella festivalwhere the trio openly denounced the « Genocide against the Palestinian people », rendered by a « American government which weapons and finances Israel », causing boycotts, indignation and multiple threats.

Kneecap, The film, therefore arrives when Kneecap, the group, is at the center accusations of terrorism for suspicions of support in Hezbollah and an intimidation campaign aimed at several European festivals, summoned to deprogram them. Electric timing for this comedy with very second half of the 90s, full of facilities and drops in rhythm but furiously contagious – and in the context aroused, absolutely salutary. A bogus biopic which without playing full excess like the brilliant Weird, The Al Yancovic Storysucceeds in having fun of his proven story (umpteenth ascent of a group of good to nothing to the top of the poster) by multiplying the more or less inspired fabulations.

The father of one of the rappers thus becomes a radical activist (played by Michael Fassbinder) who staged his death to escape the authorities; the group’s DJ a music teacher in the midst of the quarantine crisis taking a liking for two self -proclaimed « scrapers » with pockets full of coke, LSD and ketamine; And everyone ended up with a rascal police chief and an anti -Drogue republican militia.

The whole is enamelled with a more first degree socio -political layer on the debates around the Gaelic language which regularly shake Northern Ireland. And, in transparency, of a fairly brilliant evocation of what a group can be, which is trace a royal way by doing it only its head. It is the most exciting aspect of the film, which only delivers its full power in purely musical moments (recordings, concerts). To remember that beyond the controversies and provocations, it is above all there that it is played out.