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Son frère
2003 Drama
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Credits
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Director: Patrice Chéreau
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Script: Patrice Chéreau, Anne-Louise Trividic, Philippe Besson (novel)
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Photo: Eric Gautier
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Music: Angelo Badalamenti, Marianne Faithfull
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Cast: Bruno Todeschini (Thomas),
Eric Caravaca (Luc),
Nathalie Boutefeu (Claire),
Maurice Garrel (Le vieil homme),
Catherine Ferran (Head Doctor),
Antoinette Moya (La mère),
Sylvain Jacques (Vincent),
Fred Ulysse (Le père),
Robinson Stévenin (Manuel),
Pascal Greggory (Le docteur)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 95 min
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Aka: His Brother
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Summary
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...
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
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