Writer/director Jean-Baptiste Durand’s psychologically sharp debut feature (up for a passel of César Awards in France) holds to classic film technique yet brings a fresh feel to the old story of two 20-something pals as they pull apart (la femme has entered the picture) yet stick together in the crunch. Set in the underemployed South (as job statistic and as French shooting location), Raphaël Quenard is riveting and a pain as the slightly older/taller/better-looking alpha male to Anthony Bajon’s tagalong acolyte. A bit of drug dealing among the neighborhood lowlifes gets them thru the day, accompanied by Quenard’s worshipful dog, while he dreams of taking care of his agoraphobic mother by opening a restaurant. This may or may not be a pipe dream*, but what’s real is that little Bajon, the timid one, is the guy who finds a serious girlfriend, upsetting the balance between the men. She quickly sizes up Quenard, but likely mistakes his controlling behavior as a sort of bromantic jealousy when the motivating factor has more to do with a loss of dependency. Yet when a small gang of local toughs, pathetic slackers who act like a mob, go into attack mode, old ties still bind. Galatéa Bellugi is particularly fine as the girlfriend with a mind of her own, but the film belongs to the young men as they sort out what they still need from each other. Quenard especially strong at walking obnoxious behavior right up to the line without crossing it. And with Durand capturing the unusual layout of the town (we’re in the Languedoc region), along with the eccentric characters living cheek-by-jowl in row houses set in the narrow alleys that pass for streets.
DOUBLE-BILL: Finding out your big brother (surrogate or blood) isn’t the great guy you’d long looked up to is a classic rite of passage story. Something of a specialty for Brandon De Wilde, as per HUD/’63 with Paul Newman as the charismatic heel or, just a year earlier, with Warren Beatty showing feet of clay in ALL FALL DOWN/’62.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Whilst Hollywood almost never gets cooking right, France almost never gets it wrong. Here, Quenard is entirely right about not putting cream in spaghetti carbonara even if his mother likes it better that way.
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