Documenting Tragedy: ‘Rendezvous Avec Pol Pot’ Review
“Brother Number 1 prefers to live as the people do” boasts the tour guide as three French journalists make their way through a manicured vision of Cambodia as the Khmer Rouge tries to hide the atrocities they commit from the world. Rendez-vous Avec Pol Pot is 2024’s answer to the question “How far will you go to tell the truth?”
The film follows three French journalists on their odyssey through Cambodia in 1978 as they prepare for their eventual meeting with the leader of the Khmer Rouge. The film does not hold the viewer’s hand, nor even show much of the state-sponsored violence in a traditional cinematic form. The film instead opts to show the carnage through the eyes of a team of outside observers. It works on two levels: the first as an audience surrogate who asks the questions the audience wants to know if they are unfamiliar with the Khmer Rouge and the second as a story showing the importance of a free press.
The structure of the story is a masterpiece in pacing. The film chooses to slowly reveal the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime by only seeing glimpses of the carnage at first but gradually the regime hints at and ultimately confirms the killing of intellectuals and anyone deemed an enemy of the state. With that, the film uses the characters of the three journalists to illustrate three different perspectives. Paul Thomas is described as a muckraker and his impassioned search for the truth conflicts with the character played by Gregoire Colin’s friendship with Pol Pot and leftist leanings and is more hesitant to believe that his friend would be responsible for such brutal killings. In the middle is the video journalist Irene Jacobs’ character whose convictions and confrontational nature ultimately prove to be her greatest strength in such a dark time.
One of the biggest strengths of this film is the stylistic depiction of the state-sponsored violence within Cambodia. Oftentimes, the film will use wooden miniatures representing the characters as they make their way through what the Khmer Rouge manufactures, such as idealistic communes, which is then contrasted when the same miniatures are used to depict hundreds of dead bodies that Paul Thomas finds. Despite their stylistic nature, these miniatures are diegetic. These are shown to be the same miniatures that the Khmer Rouge built as a proof of concept for the tour of falsehoods in the film. Furthermore, at first, the spokespeople for the campaign lie and say that the intellectuals were all sent off to communes in the countryside despite no evidence attesting to that fact. When one journalist asks after the intellectuals who were sent off to communes one spokesperson says “You think too much”. Whereas, when Paul disappears from the group to search for evidence the tour guide tells the other journalists that if Paul is not found then everyone there will be dead before they know it. It’s interesting to see how readily everyone in a position of power is to lie to everyone else about the killings but as soon as it’s their lives on the line it’s a different story. It reflects a larger hypocrisy that is seen throughout the film.
Another strength of this film is that this is without a doubt a political film while also allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusion. Often, films like this can paint the left side of the fence with one broad brush, but this film gives the audience three relatable characters to root for that reflect our conflicting feelings on the subject matter. Paul represents our anger towards a system that fails its people while the system unabashedly criticizes Western society. Paul and Irene’s character act as the grounding in reality that a film like this needs whereas IGregoire’s character is naively attached to the lip-service communist ideology of the Khmer Rouge. The film makes a clear distinction between the message of the Khmer Rouge and the reality of it. In the first act, Pol Pot is said to stay in a small humble room in a schoolhouse because he wants to live like one of the people. But, when the journalists meet the leader face to face they are greeted not by a humble abode but by a gaudy mansion. The regime preaches humility and being a collective while having a rigid hierarchy and killing anyone who even slightly seems to disagree with the regime. The regime touts that their communes produce more than enough rice for the entire country but when Paul investigates he finds that hundreds of bags are filled with soil and rice shells. Each reveal adds more layers to each previous lie which necessitates a rewatch to catch all the details.
The standout performance of the film is Cyril Guei as Paul Thomas. The intensity of the character could be a challenge for any actor as the script relies more on physicality rather than dialogue. Still, he brings an earnest air to the archetype of the weathered journalist through his face alone. In the shots where he discovers the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, the only thing the audience sees is his face and it makes it clear what he is seeing without actually showing it. His dedication to finding the complete story reflects the story's overarching theme of freedom of speech and arc is a condemnation of what happens to whistleblowers. Throughout the film, the peasants of the regime are not allowed to speak or interact with the journalists until Paul insists that he interviews a farmer who is extremely nervous as he’s surrounded by soldiers during the interview. Nevertheless, no amount of threatening will deter Paul from discovering the truth.
Ultimately, I find this film to be a hidden gem of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s shocking, poetic, and extremely relevant in today’s climate. Not only does it have a compelling style but it also has a unique style to it that any film aficionado would appreciate for how unique it is. For fans of A24’s Civil War, this is one film that you need to see due to its similar themes regarding the press and living under a dystopian regime.
