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Son frère
2003 Drama
Review
For his most laudable film to date, director Patrice
Chéreau brings to the dark poetry and minimalist style of his
early films the maturity and insight of a truly great
auteur. Son frère
is a powerful, thoroughly compelling existential meditation on the
redeeming power of love and the need to face up to one’s own
mortality. It’s a hauntingly evocative film, shot in a way that
is at times savagely brutal in its realism, and yet having a lyrical
simplicity that makes it one of the most effective French
films in recent years. Adapted from a popular novel by Philippe Besson, the film shows how one young man is affected by his brother’s physical and psychological decline. It is in essence a love story, in which the younger sibling, Luc, struggles to overcome years of estrangement – caused partly by his closet homosexuality – to rebuild a relationship with his debilitated older brother, Thomas. It doesn’t help that Thomas’s reaction to his illness is initially one of selfish self-pitying bitterness. Luc’s newly discovered humanity may not ultimately save his brother, but it does help him to find truth in his own life, and allows him to face the future with strength and serenity. The film’s searing impact is partly down to Chéreau’s inspired (and appropriately restrained) direction, which on this occasion favours naturalism over stylistic artifice, but also to the contribution of its two lead actors, Bruno Todeschini and Eric Caravaca – who play Thomas and Luc respectively. In two extraordinarily demanding roles, these very talented actors bring a degree of realism and understated depth of characterisation which is pretty rare in cinema today. In contrast to Caravaca’s hugely sympathetic portrayal of inner torment, which suggests a faltering inability to cope with life, Todeschini conveys a hopeless desperation and bitter resentment which makes it hard to sympathise with his plight. Ingeniously, it is not the dying man who is the film’s focus, but his brother. The distance which Chéreau puts between Thomas and the audience serves to draw us further into Luc’s world, impelling us to identify with his conflicting emotions as we, like him, live through Thomas’s gradual descent into Hell. Son frère is a potent piece of cinema, yet it is also a work which makes great demands of its audience. Some of what it shows us is acutely harrowing in its portrayal of human suffering; at times, the raw emotions cut through the viewer’s consciousness like a barrage of razor-sharp scalpels. Chéreau can legitimately be criticised for using cheap shock tactics and stylistic excess in some of his films, but the same cannot be said here. Whilst certain sequences are certainly hard to stomach, these are carefully measured to bring to mind the reality of the situation. How often do dramas about terminal illness descend into tacky sentimentality and trite clichés? Here, for once, is a film which is not afraid to confront reality and show us what suffering – physical and emotional – is really like. It is this sense of uncensored authenticity which makes the tale of one man’s journey of self-discovery and re-birth in the shadow of death so believable, and which consequently makes this film so sincere, so intense, and so meaningful. © James Travers 2008 Write a review for this film...User Comments
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Director:
Patrice Chéreau
Starring: Bruno Todeschini, Eric Caravaca, Nathalie Boutefeu, Maurice Garrel, Catherine Ferran Synopsis
After many years apart, 30-something Thomas returns to his brother Luc
with the news that he is suffering from a potentially fatal blood
disease. Reluctantly, Luc agrees to accompany his older brother
to the hospital where he is to be treated for his condition.
Luc gradually wakes up to how much Thomas means to him, in spite of the latter’s apparent
determination to
antagonise everyone around him. As Thomas’s fortunes take a turn
for the worse, Luc decides to devote himself to the care of his
brother, realising that there may not be much time left to settle their
differences...
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