Review: Queer Drama 'The Divide' Explores Class Issues at a Hospital

Emergencies and crises strain people, often eliciting and revealing both cracks and deep bonds in relationships. Queer French drama "The Divide" follows a lesbian couple on the brink of breaking up while at a hospital on the night of a labor protest in Paris.

Directed by queer filmmaker Catherine Corsini – and written by Corsini, Agnès Feuvre, and Laurette Polmanss – "The Divide" ("La Fracture") stars Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Marina Foïs, Pio Marmaï, and Aïssatou Diallo Sagna. It won the Queer Palm at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, making Corsini the second woman to win the award, after Céline Sciamma.

The film opens with Raf (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) sending a litany of vicious texts in the night to Julie (Marina Foïs), her partner, who is sleeping beside her. In the morning, Julie ends their relationship and plans to move out. Raf believes they can recover from this fight and work things out, as they share love and history. But Raf's cruel words and lack of boundaries horrify Julie. When Raf falls and injures her arm, Julie accompanies her to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Yann (Pio Marmaï), a truck driver at a "Yellow Vests" labor protest in Paris, gets maced by police and his leg shot with shrapnel. Kim (Aïssatou Diallo Sagna), a nurse, checks texts about her baby amidst her busy shift.

The lives of lesbian couple Raf and Julie, Yann, and Kim all intersect at a busy, understaffed, and underfunded public hospital.

A sign in the waiting room informs patients that the wait could be 8 to 10 hours. Ceiling tiles fall in the dilapidated hospital, nearly hitting Yann. A vending machine takes his money but doesn't provide food.

At the hospital, Raf keeps amorously calling Julie "my love." Julie replies that she's only there because she's hurt. Julie insists that "nothing changes," and they're still breaking up. The two women bicker in their push-pull dynamic – mountains of frustration and love between them. Their son Eliott went to the protest, but they haven't heard from him since, compounding their stress and worries.

When Raf repeatedly screams for Julie in one scene (she left out of frustration with Raf's dishonesty), Kim goes to the waiting room to find Julie, referring to Raf as Julie's "friend," a heteronormative assumption.

While waiting for doctors and nurses, Raf and Yann argue and debate politics and class issues. They come from different ages, genders, and socio-economic backgrounds. Raf is a queer artist; Yann a truck driver, struggling to make ends meet. He says to her, "People like me don't live. We subsist." Yann worriedly tells a doctor he needs to drive tonight or he'll lose his job. Yann asks how much an X-ray will cost. (Thankfully, it's free. No one should have to worry about affording medical care.)

The performances are mostly good, but uneven at times. Pio Marmaï stands out in his performance as Yann, vacillating between worry, anger, and benevolence for other patients. I wish we had seen Kim's perspective more; I yearned to know more about her and her story.

At times, "The Divide" is tonally jarring, trying to juggle humor with sobering social commentary.

As the situation escalates – police brutality, tear gas seeping into the hospital, vexed patients waiting longer and longer for medical care, doctors and nurses stretched to their limits – the editing becomes more rapid, reifying the frenetic, apprehensive tension.

"The Divide" exudes a chaotic energy that I found simultaneously intriguing and frustrating. Via a compelling premise, it provides a snapshot into these characters' lives at an incredibly stressful moment. Centering a queer couple and utilizing a cinéma vérité style, the film explores class issues and scathingly condemns the underfunding of hospitals and inequalities in the medical care system.

This story is part of our special report: "OUTshine 2022". Want to read more? Here's the full list.