|
|
 |
| |
Brothers Gabriel (Francois Cluzet) and Francois (Guillaume Canet) in a tale of crime and redemption |
Set-to for Seventies siblings
RIVALS
Directed by Jacques Mailot
Certificate 15
THIS thriller starts off as a Continental French Connection, chocka with cops and robbers and big 1970s cars, hand guns, haircuts, and the Gallic flying squad.
But it quickly reveals itself to be a careful study of brotherly love, of crime, punishment and redemption. They are big topics to tackle, and director Jacques Maillot has done it subtly.
We meet convict Gabriel as he finishes a 10-year stretch for murder. His brother Francois is a copper with a promising career ahead of him, apprehending the likes of Gabriel who does a line in armed robbery when he is not acting as a pimp.
Francois wants to help his brother stay on the straight and narrow, but its a bigger task then either of them can properly handle – and brings up questions of loyalties and ethics as their two worlds continually clash.
Although Gabriel does his best when he comes out, he quickly finds the world both harsh on former convicts, and dull. His job in a supermarket lacks the thrills his previous employment offered, and he is soon back socialising with his underworld contacts.
Guillaume Canet (Francois) looks like a French version of Body from The Professionals, and director Maillot has managed to create the perfect period drama – the 70s comes alive in all its grotty, tasteless glory. The cars, clothes, feel – every scene has a tasteless moustachioed bloke chuffing furiously on a cigarette as he fires off expletives in rapid-fire French.
And at times Francois, for all his gentleness, does have a touch of Life On Mars’s Gene Hunt about him, happy to scuffle with the bad guys while romancing the wife of a man he put away.
Based on a true story, the to-ing and fro-ing between the siblings, their tangled love affairs and complicated family life always lurking in the background, this is a downbeat, intelligent and believable study of sibling rivalry. |
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
