For Paul, winning a gold medal at the Paris Olympics is not an option. Five times world shooting champion, he was unable to participate in the Rio Olympics in 2016 due to mononucleosis, nor in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 due to Covid. Professional policeman and obsessive sportsman, he has taken up his father’s motto: “We come, we win, we leave. »
He is trained from the age of 12 by Sonia, who knows everything about his hobbies and rituals. A bedbug infestation forces Paul to share his room in the Olympic Village with Jacob, a swimmer from Vanuatu who has more conquests than pool lengths. Our sniper faces another tile that could destroy his concentration.
Day after day, French athletes accumulate poor performances and failures. Sports journalists are shocked to see a small country like Belgium picking up medals, while France remains at zero. Like the Minister of Sports, they are looking for the athlete who will wear the national colors high. Even though the shooting suffers from a lack of notoriety, Paul aka “the sheriff” endorses it despite all hopes of a resounding victory. A spotlight that one would have done well to do without.
The flaws of the Olympics
What a great idea to set in a fiction a world event that hasn’t happened yet, but is already in everyone’s mind! Son of a sports journalist, Jérémie Sein brushes aside with caustic humor the defects that accompany this type of competition: an interest of the general public and the media concentrated only on the top disciplines, a rejection of athletes if they do not achieve the expected performances, a recovery cowardly politics.
But, even more, the director focuses with Paul on the psyche of an athlete, correlating competitive spirit and blockage in the childhood phase in a comically regressive way. For eight years this shooter has had only one obsession: winning his gold medal at the Olympics. Everything else is put in brackets. He has a childish relationship with Sonia, his coach, which prevents him from becoming an accomplished adult.
If it will appeal to spectators already annoyed by the grandeur of the games, the film implicitly recalls the spirit of Coubertin: “The important thing in these Olympics is not so much winning as participating. » Excellent surprise, Benjamin Voisin, accustomed to the roles of a charismatic handsome guy (Lost illusions, A real guy) is unrecognizable as a gifted anxious person, unsuitable for social life. She forms a comic duo with Emmanuelle Bercot that is very comfortable in the register of the absurd.