Movie Review: The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Jacques Audiard.

Written by: Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain based on the novel by Patrick DeWitt.

Starring: John C. Reilly (Eli Sisters), Joaquin Phoenix (Charlie Sisters), Jake Gyllenhaal (John Morris), Riz Ahmed (Hermann Kermit Warm), Rebecca Root (Mayfield), Allison Tolman (Girl Mayfield Saloon), Rutger Hauer (The Commodore), Carol Kane (Mrs. Sisters).

 

Jacques Audiard’s chose the Western genre to make his English language debut with The Sisters Brothers – an odd film, that lays somewhere between a loving homage to the genre, and a revisionist Western, with modern sensibilities – Audiard and company never quite settle on which. As such, the film does feel kind of shaggy at times, rambling along at its own pace like an Altman Western, and at times, wants to be something tougher and more violent like a Peckinpah Western. I don’t know that the mixture always works, and yet the movie remains entertaining and involving until the end – although its pleasures are more fleeting that much of Audiard’s previous work.

 

The film takes place in Oregon and then California during Gold Rush times. The title characters are Eli and Charlie Sisters (John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix), a pair of skilled hitmen, who do the dirty work of The Commodore (Rutger Hauer), mostly without question. They are getting older though, and Eli is starting to look at life after the killing is done – settling down, getting married, etc. Charlie, who never looks beyond the next kill, the next drink, the next whorehouse, is precisely the opposite. He’s going to keep killing forever. Their latest job has them on the trail of Herman Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), a chemist who was passing through their town, and apparently let slip to The Commodore his latest chemical formula – something he says will light up all the gold in the water, making the usual difficult work of panning for gold simple. The Commodore has already sent John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) to track Warm, and keep his eyes on him until the Sisters get there – but the brother start to suspect that Morris and has actually teamed up with Warm, as they never seem to be able to keep pace.

 

The movie then is split up between these two odd pairs – with a lot more time with the Sisters, then the other two, but everyone getting their due. Reilly and Phoenix have a natural, relaxed chemistry together, and gradually we get to know them – and their backstory more. This is probably where The Sisters Brothers most resembles Audiard’s other films – in examining the past of his characters, to find what led them to violence in the first place – not to mention the slow buildup and the brutal explosion of violence in the first place. Reilly is really the star here – and the most complex character – a man capable of tremendous violence, but also vulnerability and sensitivity. He wants out – but he needs his brother to want out as well. Phoenix is fine in his role as well – it’s just a little more clichéd a role, the drunken psycho, although that doesn’t give his character credit for his depth either.

 

Because so much time is spent with them, and they are given more depth, Gyllenhaal and Ahmed have less to work with in their scenes. Gyllenhaal adopts a sort of British accent for some reason (and, miraculously, it works) and Ahmed uses his natural charm to great advantage here. Is he a con man, or not – you can never be quite sure.

 

Ultimately, The Sisters Brothers I don’t think ever quite reaches what it is aiming for. It wants to be an example of the genre, and a modern take on it, and yet never quite commits to either. It’s fascinating to watch, and gets quote emotional at points – watching as the Brothers care for each other, as each will have to save the other in some way shape or form. I just think that perhaps the film could have been better had it committed to either being more a classic, throwback Western, or something more comedic and surreal. It doesn’t commit to either, and as such, is stuck in between.

Movie Review: Dheepan

Dheepan

Directed by: Jacques Audiard.   

Written by: Jacques Audiard & Thomas Bidegain & Noé Debré.

Starring: Jesuthasan Antonythasan (Dheepan/ Sivadhasan), Kalieaswari Srinivasan (Yalini), Claudine Vinasithamby (Illayaal), Vincent Rottiers (Brahim), Faouzi Bensaïdi (Monsieur Habib), Marc Zinga (Youssouf), Bass Dhem (Azziz), Franck Falise (Janitor of Hall C), Joséphine de Meaux (Headmistress), Jean-Baptiste Pouilloux (jurist), Nathan Anthonypillai (Interpreter), Vasanth Selvam (Colonel Cheran).

 

Dheepan is three quarters of a great movie, where, unfortunately, the filmmakers don’t seem to know how the story should end, so they tack on an action movie climax to an otherwise quiet, closely observed character study. The film was directed by Jacques Audiard – who also did The Beat My Heart Skipped, A Prophet and Rust & Bone – and it must be said that he knows how to direct that action movie climax brilliantly – doing so in a way that isn’t quite like anything in a Hollywood action movie, while still be viscerally satisfying. Still, it’s disappointing that the film goes there instead of trying to do something more complex – like the rest of the film is.

 

The movie opens in Sri Lanka, which is where we first meet Sivadhasan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) – a member of the Tamil Tigers, whose first action is to cover up some dead bodies with palm leaves as they are set on fire. Flash forward to a refugee camp where a young woman (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) is searching for a girl who can pass for 9-years old – any girl will do. She finally finds one (Claudine Vinasithamby), and takes her to a shack where she, the girl and Sivadhasan, are all given new passports – taken from dead bodies. They are now to pose as a family – Sivadhasan is now Dheepan, the young woman is now his wife Yalini and the girl is Illayaal – and they are shipped off to France as refugees. Dheepan ends up getting a job as a caretaker of a huge housing project that is basically run by drug dealers, who do nothing to hide their actions from him or anyone else. He’s been told to ignore them, and work around them, and that’s what he does. Yalini longs to leave, and go to a cousin in England, but Dheepan wants her to stay – the only way their ruse will work is if she sticks it out. She eventually gets a job cooking and cleaning for an invalid in one of the buildings – although a scary drug dealer, Brahaim (Vincent Rottiers) basically uses that apartment as a front. Yalini feels nothing for Dheepan – or their “daughter” – at least not at first. Illayaal is scared – which is natural – and has some trouble at school, before she settles in. She is also the only one who initially knows any French, and she tries her best to translate for her new parents.

 

In the first couple of acts of Dheepan, the film does a masterful job at showing how these three characters interact with the world outside their apartment – and with each other inside of it. Outside, they try their best to put on a happy front, but it’s hard. The movie shows how these characters are dislocated from everything they know – how hard it is to fit in a country where you do not speak the language, and the difficulty on maintaining their charade. The drug dealers who run the project look straight through Dheepan – like he isn’t even there. His past in Sri Lanka is never more than hinted it – both in terms of what exactly he did in the war – how many people he killed, etc. – and his personal life, including a perhaps dead family. Antonythasan is terrific in the role – that echoes his own story (although he fled far younger than his character did) – as he registers so much of his pain on his face. Srinivasan is his equal as Yalini – we know absolutely nothing about her past – and her gradual softening towards both Dheepan and Illayaal – she used them to get away from Sri Lanka – but has no intent of sticking around. But being in such close proximity will inevitably do something to you. There are tender moments between her and Dheepan. Her “friendship” with Brahim is interesting as well – when she first enters that building, she is terrified – the long stairway she has to ascend is dark, there are drug dealers and chained up pit bulls around every corner. Brahim seems nice at times – and there is a terrific scene where she reveals things to him that she never does anyone else in the film – and she only does so because she knows he cannot understand a word she is saying. Rottiers is terrific as Brahim – he can be very charming and likable, but he’s able to flip a switch, and violence flares into his eyes, and you know he is capable of killing anyone who maybe a threat to him. Vinasithamby as Illayaal is quite good, in what is ultimately an underwritten role. The film seems to lose interest in her story fairly on, which is a shame. After all, if Dheepan and Yalini are struggling to assimilate, and hold onto themselves, how much more difficult would that be for a child, who has lost everything, and is now thrust into a new “family” in a country she does not understand.

 

Dheepan fits in very neatly with the other Audiard films I mentioned above – all of which, on some level, are about violent people who try to leave that behind, and gain some sort of redemption. Audiard does a great job in Dheepan of showing how these three people leave chaos in their own country, and enter a completely new kind of chaos in what was supposed to be a more peaceful, civilized place. He draws two excellent performances out of his non-experienced leading actors. But the ending really does not work – or to put it more bluntly, is far too conventional an ending for everything that leads up to it. That Dheepan has violence in him was something known from the beginning – but the way it explodes out of him seems rather arbitrary and contrived, no matter how well staged it was by Audiard. I’m not sure what to make of the very last shot in the movie either – which is, I think, an attempt to return to what was happening before the violence – but I’m not sure quite works.

 

Dheepan won the Palme D’or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival – arguably the most prestigious award in all of cinema. That in a year where the official competition contain films like Son of Sail, Mountains May Depart, The Assassin, Sicario, The Lobster and Carol that Dheepan would be judged to be the best is, to me, rather obviously wrong. Yet, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot to like about Dheepan – from its performances, to almost everything in first three quarters of the film, to even the staging of the action in the last act. Yes, I think Audiard has made better films before, and the ending here hits the wrong notes. But everything until then is excellent.

Movie Review: Rust & Bone

Rust and Bone
Directed by: Jacques Audiard.
Written by: Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain based on the story by Craig Davidson.
Starring: Marion Cotillard (Stéphanie), Matthias Schoenaerts (Alain van Versch), Armand Verdure (Sam), Céline Sallette (Louise), Corinne Masiero (Anna), Bouli Lanners (Martial), Jean-Michel Correia (Richard), Mourad Frarema (Foued), Yannick Choirat (Simon).

Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone is a melodrama about two damaged people, who help save each other. It’s a somewhat odd choice for Audiard as a follow-up to his masterpiece A Prophet, which is one of the best crime dramas/prison movies ever made. This film is a more standard issue melodrama – one that tries, and succeeds, in trying to make the audience feel sympathy for its two main characters. While the film is nowhere near as good as A Prophet was – it is still a fascinating, heartfelt little film – and contains two excellent lead performances.

The first character we meet is Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), who for reasons the movie never fully explains, no has custody of his five year old son Sam that he barely knows. He travels to live with his sister Anna (Corrine Masiero) and her husband that he hasn’t seen in years. They don’t have much, but welcome Ali and Sam into their home. Ali has no discernible skills – he used to box and Thai box – but he doesn’t much do that anymore. He gets work as a bouncer – and later as a security guard, and working for a security consultant, who specializes in placing illegal cameras in business, that allow the bosses to monitor their employees. It is while he is a bouncer that he meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) at a club. She gets hit, and he takes her home – and although she has a boyfriend, he gives her his number anyway.

Stephanie is a whale trainer at park that looks like Marin World to me. We see her during one of her performances – set to Katy Perry’s Fireworks – as she and the other trainers direct the whale what to do. What starts as a fun episode, begins to take on an ominous tone – we know something is about to happen, well before it does. What happens is a horrific accident that takes both of Stephanie’s legs above the knee. Wherever her boyfriend goes, it’s clear he is not sticking around. Her friends and family feel awkward around her – and soon with no one left to turn to, she calls Ali. Surprisingly, Ali treats her like a normal person – which is precisely what she needs. Ali is no saint – we see him cruelly lashing out at his son, and eventually, he’ll get into the world of underground fighting. Both of these people are hurting, and need each other, or else they may just spiral downwards to a point of no return.

The reason to see the movie is the two excellent lead performances. Schoenaerts role will probably remind viewers of his role in Bullhead – an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film Last Year – where he played a man with a secret, who feels grossly inadequate, and overcompensates for their inadequacy by building his muscles. That was a great performance, in a movie that tried to needlessly add complexity with an absurd plot. Ali is a similar character – although more vocal than his character in Bullhead, both men feel inadequate, and try to mask their inner pain with the outer shell they show the world. Both men are angry and prone to violence – Ali has just found a way to release that anger in a (marginally) more acceptable way. If Bullhead announces a major new acting talent, than Rust and Bone confirms it. And Cotillard is Schoenaerts equal in every way in this movie. She plays a similar role in some ways – a woman who likes to be desired by men, who used to love when men stared at her, and fantasized about her, but now has to deal with the fact that everyone sees her differently now – not as an object to lust after, but a woman to be pitied. Through Ali, she gets back out into the world – is able to start seeing herself differently than before. She also learns though that Ali may not be someone you want to count on. This is a very internal performance by Cotillard – she doesn’t explode, like many actors would giving what her character goes through, but simply tries to bury it down deep inside herself. It’s some of the best work she has ever done.

I’m not quite sure I buy the ending of the movie. The Craig Davidson short story that was used as a jumping off point for this story had a much darker ending than this – and it seemed more appropriate to the story. And yet, emotionally anyway, I prefer this ending. I may not quite believe it – but I want to. 

Movie Review: A Prophet

A Prophet ****
Directed By: Jacques Audiard.

Written By: Jacques Audiard & Thomas Bidegain and Abdel Raouf Dafri & Nicolas Paufaillit.

Starring: Tahar Rahim (Malik El Djebena), Niels Arestrup (César Luciani), Adel Bencherif (Ryad), Hichem Yacoubi (Reyeb), Reda Kateb (Jordi), Jean-Philippe Ricci (Vettori), Gilles Cohen (Prof), Antoine Basler (Pilicci), Leïla Bekhti (Djamila), Pierre Leccia (Sampierro), Foued Nassah (Antaro), Jean-Emmanuel Pagni (Santi).

No matter what the political implications of Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet are (and there are a lot of them), what haunts me about the movie is the difference between the opening and closing scenes in the film. When Malik (Tahar Rahim) walks into prison in the film’s opening scene, he is 19 year old kid, given six years for punching a cop, with no family and no friends either in prison, or outside. Two and half hours later (approximately 4 years in movie time) he walks out of jail having become a murderer, drug dealer and major crime figure. In a very real way, Malik had to go to prison to become a criminal.

When Malik arrives at the prison, he is completely alone. He is a Muslim, but not a devout one, so he is stuck into the cell block populated by the Muslims. Any chance he has of befriending anyone there goes away almost immediately when two inmates beat him up for his shoes. From then on, he doesn’t trust the other Muslims.

Then something happens. A new Muslim comes into the prison, for only a few weeks until he has a chance to testify at some big trial. He approaches Malik about selling him some hash, and when Malik says he has no money, the other inmate, Reyab (Hichem Yacoubi) says he can arrange it with the guard so Malik can come into his cell and suck him off. Malik refuses, but there are no secrets in the jail. Word gets back to the Corsicans, who essentially run the prison, of Reyab’s offer. They want Malik to kill him for them, and tell him that if he doesn’t they’ll kill him instead. When Malik slashes Reyab’s throat with a razor blade, his fate is sealed. He no longer has to worry about anyone messing with him, because he is under the protection of the Corsicans, led by Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), but he still doesn’t really have any friends. The Corsicans treat him as their servant, making him clean up and make them coffee. Malik doesn’t mind so much. He is always listening, always learning.

Eventually Cesar will need more and more from Malik. Most of the rest of the Corsicans are either released or transferred to a prison closer to their home, meaning that Cesar has no one else he can trust. His grasp on the prison is slipping, as the Muslims, who have always out numbered the Coriscans, now wield some influence with the guards as well. When Malik gets the chance for work release, Cesar starts sending him on errands for him – meeting and negotiating with his associates on the outside. What Cesar doesn’t realize is that Malik is no longer just working for him. He has made contacts with Jordi (Reda Kateb), the prison drug dealer, and another inmate who has since been released Ryab (Adel Bencherif), and he has his own thing going now. He is turning himself into quite the little drug kingpin. We realize long before Cesar does that eventually Malik will turn on him – having learned all he could from him, sooner or later, Malik will have to make his move.

I have mentioned the Corsicans several times in this review now, and if you’re like me, you probably have no idea who they are, as I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them on the news. Apparently, some Corsicans (from Corsica an island governed by France that is between France and Italy, that have their own language), believe they should have independence from France, and some committed terrorist acts to try and further this aim. The Corsicans in this movie say they are political prisoners, but really operate much more like the Mafia then the IRA.

Writer/director Audiard draws parallels between the Muslims and the Corsicans. Both are angry with the French government, and feel marginalized and have lashed out in violence against what they believe are their oppressors.

A Prophet looks at this fascinating, rarely seen subculture with his eyes wide open. Audiard is meticulous in his view, but his characters never become ciphers – never just mere stand-ins for his larger political issues. A Prophet is a fascinating, violent look at these men. This is a key movie in Audiard’s career – the moment he goes from the promising director of such films as The Beat My Heart Skipped, into a master filmmaker. His movie is an epic crime drama, the likes of which we rarely see. The pace is dizzying, the scope huge, and yet intimate. He never loses sight of Malik in the grander scheme of things. Newcomer Tahar Rahim delivers one of the best performances of the year as Malik – his confidence slowly building, as he transforms from the naïve kid we see at the beginning of the film, into the hardened criminal at the end. Malik’s transformation is almost tragic, but Rahim makes it feel real and genuine. Malik may be happy with himself by the end of the movie, he doesn’t realize that he has sold his soul.