With “The Amazon Gang”, Lyna Khoudri awakens the forgotten memory of a gang of robbers

CINEMA – The heist of the century by Rihanna and Sandra Bullock in Ocean’s 8 is about to get really old. And for good reason, around thirty years after the events, a thriller returns to the cinema, this Wednesday, November 12, with the true but little-known story of a group of outstanding French robbers, The Amazon Gang.

Backtracking. We are at the turn of the 1990s in the small town of Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in Vaucluse, when Hélène receives a letter from the CAF. A mistake has been made. She would have received “too much” allowances. To repay, only 31 francs will now be paid per month, or a little less than 5 euros.

It is not thanks to her meager pay as a bakery saleswoman that Hélène will be able to continue to feed her three children whom she raises alone with her mother, nor to pay the house loan. He needs a solution quickly. Impossible to ask for money from those around her: her three best friends are just as precarious. Katy has an idea. What if they robbed the local Crédit Agricole. Is this a joke? No, she is very serious. Carole approves. Hélène hesitates, then accepts. Only Laurence is really reluctant, before joining them.

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The first hold-up, where Malika, Katy’s sister, who had come to make a withdrawal, happened to be there, went smoothly. Hooded, they get their hands on a loot of 116,000 francs without being caught. They therefore reoffend not once, nor two or three, but six other times.

The arrest of the “Amazons”

Their modus operandi is the same every time. Wearing makeup and hairpieces, they act as a pair in broad daylight. A third accomplice is waiting for them in a stolen car, whose license plate is still visible. The money they make from it? They spend it on outings, lots of shopping and toys for children.

One fine day, Hélène, who had gone to Auchan with her mother, was arrested. We hold her for a day, then release her. First heatstroke. The four women draw a line under the heists for a year until the day when Katy, after going into exile in Corsica, is caught after a botched burglary. One after the other, they get caught and admit the facts.

Without sensationalism or miserabilism… The Amazon Gang returns to the striking news item with sincerity and accuracy. There is no question of aestheticizing the violence, nor of advocating the heist: its heroines are not set up as figures of anti-capitalism, but as a group of friends in need, who have allowed themselves to be overtaken by events.

Words from Hélène and Katy

« It was a lot of pain, but also a lot of lovetestifies the real Hélène Trinidad, interviewed before the release of the film by our colleagues atHérault Tribune. Katy, my friends, I really liked them. » Far from her comedies, filmmaker Melissa Drigeard says she wanted to show, here, “ human complexity, not just fault.”

It was by coming across a numberSensitive matters on France Inter that the project was born. “ She simply contacted us. And I immediately said “yes”. My friend Hélène was a little reluctant. But it went really well. (…) She let us express ourselves, without ever cutting us off », remembers Katy at Corse Net Infos.

Trust was established. Tongues were loosened, and anecdotes flourished. “ The Avignon gendarmes came to pick me up in Porto-Vecchiocontinues, for example, the leader in the columns of the Corsican news site. I was going to hide at the beach. At the time, I was young, beautiful and tanned. So, I went among the tourists. »

The meeting with his interpreter Lyna Khoudri only took place three weeks after the start of filming, for the trial scene. The same for Izïa Higelin, Laura Felpin, Mallory Wanecque and Kenza Fortas, and those they play. Melissa Drigeard refused to allow this to happen any sooner. “ She spoke to me about the girls in such detail, almost intimately, that even before meeting them, I already had the impression of being in their heads. », however concedes Lyna Khoudri.

The press of the time, of incredible misogyny »

Newspaper articles, documentaries, videos… The director provided them with a significant amount of references. It was not only necessary to stay as close as possible to the true story of these women who, for more than a year, fooled the gendarmes who thought they were men, but also to understand the treatment reserved for them.

« Once unmaskedsays Melissa Drigeard in the production notes, it’s worse. The press headlines are incredibly misogynistic. » “When housewives turn into shrews”, she quotes, first. “ They exchanged their baguettes for sawed-off shotguns. she then slips.

The film tells the rest. Imprisoned for four months as a preventive measure, the five accused (Hélène, Katy, Carole, Laurence and Malika) were released due to a procedural flaw before their trial was held, scheduled for four years later. During this period, and under the leadership of the investigating judge at the time, they all took the opportunity to redeem their behavior.

They were tried in September 1996. In the dock, four of them admitted the facts. The fifth, no. She will be the only one to serve a one-year prison sentence, the other four receiving suspended sentences.

A debt for life

For some, the pleading of one of the lawyers played a key role. In it, Mr. Guenoun alluded to The criminogenic societya book by Jean Pinatel published in 1971 in which the French criminologist points out inequalities in society and class violence to partly explain delinquency in disadvantaged environments.

Others have a second hypothesis, absent from the film. “ Three days before their trial, the same jurors had to work on an absolutely horrific child rape case », specifies in turn the director, according to whom in comparison the Amazons “ seemed very nice and their faults not so serious ».

The fact remains that they were ordered to repay what they stole. A lifelong debt, which Laurence, for example, finished paying only two years ago. Since then, they have all reintegrated into society, and no one has reoffended, even if Katy says she has been contacted on many occasions to commit other shenanigans.

Today, the friends have moved away. Only Carole, Hélène and Katy are still in contact, even the latter and her sister Malika no longer speak to each other. “ It must be said that I never got along very well with her. And above all, she is mad at me because she was upset for nothing “, she believes. This Wednesday, fiction brings them together.