Film Review
There is a raw, almost primal, beauty and depth of feeling to Claire Denis's films
that renders them virtually unique in Western cinema today. Such
is the hypnotic power of her films, the lyrical simplicity that belies
their emotional impact in a way that is redolent of the cinema of the
Far East (represented by Yasujiro Ozu, Hou Hsiao-sien, etc.), that you cannot help
wondering why this kind of cinema is so hard to come by in the
West.
35 rhums is
Denis's finest achievement to date, a beguiling and subtly moving
portrait of a father slowly coming to terms with the fact that he is
going to have to learn to live without the two things he cherishes most
in his life, his job as a train driver and the daughter with whom he
has enjoyed an intensely close relationship. What makes the film
so effective is that the drama comes from deep within the protagonists,
their feelings slowly exposed by the way in which they regard
the world around them and how they relate to one another, not with
words, but with silent gestures and looks that convey so much about the
emotions struggling to break through the placid surface calm.
This is a film that deals with the most banal of subjects in the most
unsensational manner possible, and yet it is captivating,
so eloquent in the way the inner lives of the
characters are revealed to us, the traumas and tragedies which mere
words are powerless to express.
In common with many of Claire Denis's films,
35 rhums has an autobiographical
aspect to it. One of the enduring memories that Denis had of her
childhood was the intense relationship that existed between her
grandfather and her mother. It is their story which provides the
essence for this film, the story of a solitary middle-aged man who
has arrived at the point in his life when he must allow his daughter to
leave him and start her own life. For the part of the
character who is based on her grandfather, Denis cast Alex Descas, one
of France's most gifted black actors who had already featured in
several of her films, including
S'en
fout la mort (1990),
J'
ai pas sommeil (1994) and
Trouble
Every Day (2001). In a performance that it is
unbelievably true to life, Descas makes us aware of his character's
traumatic inner quandary almost without any external sign of what he is
feeling. Like Denis, he is an artist who does not daub compassion
on the surface but instead compels us to look deeper, to go beyond the
merely superficial, to wade into the deep rivers of emotion that lie
underneath and to actually feel what his character feels.
The other characters are almost as faultlessly cast. Making her
screen debut in the role of Descas's daughter is Mati Diop, the niece
of the distinguished Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty.
Diop not only has a striking screen presence, she is also the perfect
complement to Descas, showing her character's emotional conflict in a
similarly introspective vein. Nicole Dogue and Grégoire
Colin, another frequent Denis collaborator, complete the handsome
quartet and bring further depth and meaning with their equally
restrained, yet equally expressive performances. It is with the
support of this talented cast and, as ever, the great artistry of her
cinematographer Agnès Godard, that Claire Denis delivers her
most alluring and humane film to date.
35 rhums offers a sweetly
melancholic slice of life that immediately grabs our attention with its
sublime cinematic beauty and then holds us spellbound with the
exquisite poignancy of the story it has to tell, a story of quiet
despair told with genuine warmth and feeling. This is cinema at
its most truthful and most engaging - just why are we not clamouring
for more films of this kind?
© James Travers 2011
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Next Claire Denis film:
White Material (2010)
Film Synopsis
Lionel has had a hard life. A black immigrant who lost his wife
many years ago, he has struggled to bring up his daughter,
Joséphine, alone on the modest pay he earns as a train
driver. They have lived a peaceful but withdrawn life together -
Lionel thinks only of his daughter, and she thinks only of him.
But as Lionel approaches the age of retirement, he realises that not
only will he soon be without a job, he is also about to lose his
daughter. Once Joséphine has completed her studies, she
will want to start her own life with another man, perhaps Noé,
the young man who owns the flat above theirs. How will Lionel
cope when he has given up the two things that give his life meaning?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.