La Blonde aux seins nus (2010)
Directed by Manuel Pradal

Film Review

Director Manuel Pradal still has yet live up to the promise of his first notable film, Marie baie des anges (1997).  Pradal's latest offering, La Blonde aux seins nus, feels like an all too obvious attempt to recapture the brooding eroticism of that film but fails to be much more than an extremely poor relation.  Pradal's mise-en-scène lacks the finesse of his early work and pretty well chokes the life out of this water-based road movie.  The painfully contrived scenario does not help matters much either.

The only thing going for this film are the contributions from the three lead actors.  Vahina Giocante is an enigmatic object of desire, mysterious and sensual as the thoroughly modern femme fatale.  As eye-catching as Giocante is however it is her male co-stars, Nicolas Duvauchelle and Steve Le Roi, who claim the film as their own.  Despite some absolutely risible dialogue, both actors succeed in making their characters and their predicament believable.  Had Pradal been more restrained and focussed in his writing and direction, this could have been an extremely powerful portrayal of sibling conflict.  Instead, it feels aimless and confused, mechanically directed and scripted with no real conviction or appreciation of how human beings communicate with one another in the real world.   A sad misfire.

Film Synopsis

Julian, a man in his mid-twenties, scrapes a living by shipping gravel on his barge up and down the waterways of Paris.  In this he is assisted by his younger brother Louis, still a boy, to whom he is devotedly attached.  The two brothers scarcely earn enough to live on, so occasionally they have to resort to petty crime to make ends meet.  One day, they are offered the chance of making a fortune for themselves by stealing a valuable painting - Manet's La blonde aux seins nus - from the Musée d'Orsay art gallery.  The offer is too good to resist.

It is the ever-resourceful Louis who manages to pull of this incredible theft, not knowing that he has been noticed by a museum guard, Rosalie.  The latter follows the boy back to his barge and challenges him and his brother to return the stolen painting.  After a fierce confrontation, Rosalie finds herself locked up in the boat's tiny hold, as the brothers make a hasty get-away down the River Seine.  Julian and his brother can breathe a sigh of relief when they reach Joinville-le-Pont in the south-eastern suburbs of the capital.  This is when Rosalie makes them an unexpected offer, one that they are in no position to turn down...