To Die For...A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009)

Many films spring to mind. I have nostalgic choices and ones based on favourite performances (Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl, Cotillard in Rust and Bone, Shoenaerts in Bullhead), but the film that sucker-punched me on its first viewing is Jacques Audiard's A Prophet. It's a frontrunner in contemporary cinema and ruins me every time I watch it. I went to see it with a couple of friends who wrote it off as being "violent' and "too long". I got that it was brutal and relentless but at the heart of the film is triumph and defiance. Malik El Djebena's (Tahar Rahim) departure from timid to invulnerable is effortless; Rahim is staggeringly good in the role. His character would never have behaved the way he does were he not in prison, and because of that he emerges a hero despite the heinous things he's forced to do. And I love a broken hero. 

As an audience member the relationship between Malik and Cesar Luciana (Niels Arestrup) is terrifying but engrossing. From an actor's perspective the central performances are flawless. From a girl who grew up watching gangster movies it ticks that box too. I'd seen Audiard's work before and been wowed, but, for me, A Prophet is his masterpiece. Audiard does't even use an overbearing score to manipulate us. Though I do always relish the burst of Nas in the kitchen/montage scene, reflecting Malik's change. The hero succeeds and the baddie crumples, which, after over two hours of anguish is just what the audience/me needs. The story, Audiard's understanding of what makes the perfect performance (I truly believe they are perfect) and the acute intimacy of the handheld shooting firmly cements A Prophet as my film to die for. 

Rebecca Callard

Rebecca Callard is an English actress based in London. Her credits include The Borrowers, Robin Hood, The Grand and Blackout with Christopher Eccleston.  Rebecca can be seen next year with Michael Smiley and Steven Graham in the film Orthodox (@Orthodox_film) and in Simon Stephen's (@StephenSimon) play Blindsided. 
You can follow Rebecca on Twitter here.

LFF: Family Matters...(pt2)

A grim tale of familial and psychological breakdown comes under the spotlight of part 2 of Family Matters...

Like storm clouds on the horizon, a sense of foreboding hangs heavy over Joachim Lafosse's 
family centred drama Our Children. This fatalistic air is instilled via a prologue sequence during which a hospitalized woman tells a nurse that 'they must be buried in Morocco'. Flicking back in time we see the aforementioned patient, Murielle (Emilie Dequenne), in the warm glow of a blossoming love affair with Tahar Rahim's Mounir. The adopted Algerian son of Belgian doctor Andre (played by Niels Arestrup, Rahim's co-star from Jacques Audiard's A Prophet), Mounir romances Murielle all the way down the aisle, into the house he shares with Andre and into a marriage that will eventually lead to the horrific events hinted at in the opening scene.

A downbeat vision of a seemingly happy marriage blessed with bright, healthy children slowly unravelling under the weight of familial, economic and cultural pressures, Our Children takes in post-colonial guilt, gender expectations, parental responsibility/neglect and emotional/physical abuse as Murielle's deteriorating mental health becomes the film's central focal point. While Dequenne's portrayal of Murielle is excellent, with Rahim and Arestrup providing A grade support, Our Children suffers from a lack of balance that ultimately takes the emotional sting out of the film's bleak climax. Where the incremental changes to Murielle's emotional and mental states are handled with detailed care, Mounir and Andre's increasingly agitated, cold and outright aggressive attitude towards her aren't given the same focus. Though told over a number of years, the change in Mounir, from affable and caring to distant and hard, comes about too suddenly. Similarly, Andre's shift from proud father-in-law and grandfather to oppressive tyrant is more of a lurch than a gradual drift, throwing the overall narrative out of whack. 

By focusing on one side of a failing marriage Lafosse fatally undermines what should have been a gut-wrenching dénouement, stripping it of the impact strived for. By rendering two thirds of the adult members of this family in superficial tones, thus making them the 'bad guys' to use a crude phrase, no emotional investment is forthcoming at precisely the time it is most required. This leaves Our Children a hollow exercise in miserablism when it could have been one in fostering deep empathy leading to crushing sadness.