Working in a mode greatly influenced by the Dardennes brothers, Depesseville makes a dazzling debut as a filmmaker, amazingly rich in style and tone.
Newcomer Mirko Giannini is stunning throughout this troubling tale as a vexed enigmatic boy stranded in rural France while in the care of a greedily irresponsible couple augmenting their income from their duties as his foster parents. Little more than children themselves, they govern him with casual brutality and a self-serving dismissiveness.
He finds his only solace through a new relationship with a local girl his own age who exhibits a carnal yen for him that he accepts with much exuberance. But the initially rewarding relationship leads him to an ultimate betrayal by her with the sadistic local bully who is his nemesis.
Depesseville's outward pessimism alternates with a dazzlingly dreamy visual style that makes for something much deeper here than the typical miserabilist cinema of a Lynne Ramsay or Ken Loach. Hopefully there will be much more of this moody raging genius at work in this brave new director's future.
Newcomer Mirko Giannini is stunning throughout this troubling tale as a vexed enigmatic boy stranded in rural France while in the care of a greedily irresponsible couple augmenting their income from their duties as his foster parents. Little more than children themselves, they govern him with casual brutality and a self-serving dismissiveness.
He finds his only solace through a new relationship with a local girl his own age who exhibits a carnal yen for him that he accepts with much exuberance. But the initially rewarding relationship leads him to an ultimate betrayal by her with the sadistic local bully who is his nemesis.
Depesseville's outward pessimism alternates with a dazzlingly dreamy visual style that makes for something much deeper here than the typical miserabilist cinema of a Lynne Ramsay or Ken Loach. Hopefully there will be much more of this moody raging genius at work in this brave new director's future.
