Le Dernier coup de marteau (2015)
Directed by Alix Delaporte

Film Review

Angèle et Tony was one of the most critically acclaimed French films of 2011, a refreshingly unsentimental romantic drama that marked an auspicious debut for its director Alix Delaporte and won Césars for its two lead actors Clotilde Hesme and Grégory Gadebois.  Four years on, this talented threesome are back with another resoundingly authentic drama which reaffirms Delaporte's standing as one of the shining lights of contemporary French cinema.  Le Dernier coup de marteau is a sober coming-of-age drama which powerfully evokes the bitter traumas of adolescence without resorting to the kind of deliberate heartstring pulling or plot contrivances which the genre is known for.  In common with its author's previous film, it is an understated, underplayed and yet incredibly moving piece of cinema that can hardly fail to leave a lasting impression.

For most of the film, Clotilde Hesme and Grégory Gadebois are kept apart, a disappointment perhaps for those hoping to witness a replay of their prickly but tender love affair in Angèle et Tony.  Here they are cast as an estranged couple who belong to very different worlds, one a renowned orchestra conductor, the other a hard-up single mum living among what some Americans refer to as trailer trash.  The only tangible bond between them is the child that was born from their short-lived romantic entanglement fourteen years previously - a teenage boy named Victor who lives up to his name as a series of emotional crises come hurtling in his direction.  Playing Victor is screen debutant Romain Paul, who quickly establishes himself as the star of the film - he received the Marcello Mastroianni prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2014 for his incredibly astute and convincing performance.

Le Dernier coup de marteau derives its title from Mahler's Sixth Symphony, which features in the narrative as the piece that Gadebois's character is busy rehearsing when Victor suddenly breaks into his life.  The symphony ends with three hammer blows which symbolise the three blows of fate, the last being death.  (Conscious of his own mortality after two personal disasters, Mahler was moved to excise the third of the blows and it is now included at the discretion of the conductor. )  The 'last blow' facing Victor on his route to manhood is soon made apparent to us and it hangs in the air as a mocking harbinger of future woe as the boy manfully faces up to the other challenges that life presents him with whilst his adult identity slowly begins to take shape.

Alix Delaporte is not a filmmaker who overstates matters.  She uses dialogue sparsely and leaves gaps in the narrative which we have to fill in for ourselves.  The characters express far more with non-verbal cues than they do with words, and the fact that they have so much difficulty expressing themselves in words emphasises their emotional isolation and makes them appear more real and tragic.  The scenes in which Victor and his father gradually come to accept one another and develop a shared bond of understanding are exquisite in their simplicity and directness but harrowingly true-to-life, and it is a credit to Delaporte that she leaves so much to her actors, allowing them to suggest moods and feelings by looks and gestures which not even the world's greatest screenwriter could match with dialogue.  In narrative terms, Le Dernier coup de marteau is straightforward to the point of being banal, and yet its director and three principal actors magically turn this into something sharp and wonderful - a series of arresting slices of life which add up to a thoroughly engrossing emotional experience.

Film Synopsis

Victor is a 13-year-old soccer enthusiast who lives with his mother Nadia in a trailer park by the sea in Montpellier.  Money is short and, unbeknown to the teenager, Nadia has a life-threatening illness.  Whilst his mother is keen that they should move in with her parents, Victor becomes interested in finding his father, whom he has never met as his parents separated before he was born.  It so happens that Victor's father, the famous conductor Samuel Rovinski, is presently rehearsing a recital of Mahler's Sixth Symphony.  Rovinski knows nothing of his son's existence and is initially far from pleased to make Victor's acquaintance.  But as they get to know one another, the boy and his father begin to develop a mutual fondness.  Meanwhile, Victor has other problems to contend with.  He is under pressure from his coach to train for admission to a football school, and he is experiencing his first amourous stirrings with his pretty Spanish neighbour Luna.  Is Victor strong enough to cope with the upsets that are coming his way...?