French cinema stars defy AI

Cédric Jimenez is fascinated by law enforcement. Or, more precisely, the faces behind them: their routines, their dedication, their noble fallibility. Until now, he had approached the issue from the codes of the expeditious policeman and with a certain claim to realism, to the point of presenting, in November, a spectacular recreation of the investigation after the Paris attacks of 2015. Zone 3 maintains the thematic motif, but changes the focus to look towards the day before yesterday's world: the French government, in addition to implementing a zone system that prevents residents of the banlieue from accessing the capital's city center, leaves surveillance and police investigations in the hands of an artificial intelligence from which it is almost impossible to escape.

Jimenez presents the film's dystopian images as a warning of dangers that are already knocking at the door; however, his defense of the human factor against algorithmic tyranny would be more credible if the imagery and writing of Zone 3

did not shine like a reheated of science fiction ingredients that seems to be chained together by a software sibling of the one that the script turns into a nemesis. In reality, the only asset of the film that could not be reproduced by a machine is the savoir-faire of Adèle Exarchopoulos and the rest of the French-speaking stars who inhabit it, convincing both when they have to run in a frantic chase and when they destroy a 4 Non Blondes classic at karaoke.