Neil Young's Film Lounge

for Tribune 21.Jan : A PROPHET [6/10] and THE BOYS ARE BACK [4/10] : online 21st January

A Prophet
Director: Jacques Audiard

The Boys Are Back
Director: Scott Hicks

WE’RE barely three weeks into the new year, but it’s a safe bet that the most enthusiastically reviewed new film of 2010 will turn out to be Jacques Audiard’s prison-drama A Prophet. Indeed, it was many critics’ choice as the cream of last year’s crop after premiering to near-universal acclaim at Cannes in May. It went on to dominate Sight and Sound‘s best-of-2009 poll, with contributors describing Audiard’s fourth picture as writer-director variously as “a class above something like The Shawshank Redemption,” “a film which needs every second of its two-and-a-half hours,” and “genuinely perfect.”
   One critic perceived an allegory for the life of the prophet Mohammed, another interpreted its plot, whereby greenhorn Malik (Tahar Rahim) learns the ropes – and plays off various factions against each other to his own ultimate benefit over the course of a six-year sentence, as a commentary upon “the demographic shifts in French society” since 1959.
   Already ranked a front-runner for February’s Best Foreign Language Oscar – where its rivals will probably include the movie which edged it out for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, A Prophet is, in short, one of those rare foreign-language films that even people who don’t usually venture far from multiplexes feel they should see. That’s despite, in this case, the daunting running-time and the occasional outburst of graphic bloodshed, a combination which may prevent it from becoming a UK arthouse “breakout” success along the lines of Let the Right One In and The Lives of Others.
   In the month that saw the passing of Eric Rohmer, the name of 57-year-old Parisian Audiard (son of prolific writer and occasional director Michel Audiard) is certain to be mentioned when the current scene is surveyed. But for this particular critic, Audiard hasn’t really done enough to justify elevation to any kind of pantheon. Read My Lips (2001) and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), bringing us deep into lives lived on the edge of the law, were executed with cool proficiency, tweaking genre material in highbrow directions – although the latter, a brave remake of James Toback’s berserk Fingers (1978), flirted dangerously with pretentiousness. A Prophet continues Audiard’s fascination with criminality, but in trying to expand his vision to a larger, even more audacious canvas, his limitations are exposed.
   Because, while it’s dominated by a truly sensational – indeed, Oscar-worthy – lead performance by unknown Rahim, and is shot with a chilly brilliance by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine, with a terrifically low-key score by Alexandre Desplat, A Prophet falls down on the crucial matter of the script (co-written by Audiard with Jacques Bidegain, from an “original screenplay” by Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit, “idea” by Dafti)
   Malik’s total lack of family-ties and friendship-bonds outside jail is an implausible contrivance – it’s pivotal to the plot, however, and explains why he must get on the good side of the prison’s reigning Mr Big, Luciani (Niels Arestrup.) And while his complex relationship with Luciani is sensitively dramatised, there’s not much sense of the wider dynamics of the “big house” – a surprising omission given the notional creative latitude afforded by the running-time.
   Malik’s transition from nervy illiterate to swaggeringly confident linguist (French, Arabic, Corsican) is engaging to watch, but somewhat unlikely – as is his ability to pull off a series of increasingly elaborate criminal activities while on day-release. Indeed, the major fault of Audiard’s screenplay is that the day-release shenanigans gradually take such precedence – after a while, it’s possible to forget the fact that Malik is actually “in” jail at all. And the less said about the “deer ex machina” the better…
   Various dream-sequences and hallucinations – in which Malik is “visited” by a man he’s been forced (in the most startling of several intense set-pieces) to murder with a razor-blade – further impede the narrative flow, dragging us in the direction of recent, homegrown variants on prison-picture themes such as Hunger and Bronson. Such fanciful avant-garderies sit awkwardly with A Prophet‘s core strengths of simplicity, directness and brutal claustrophobia: Audiard, like his protagonist, struggles to reconcile his (all-too-evident) tough-guy aspirations with a more reflective sensitivity. Thanks to Rahim’s rock-solid work, we’re with Malik every step of his journey – but Audiard’s palpable desire to be a combination of Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese and Samuel Fuller ends up undermining the overall impact of his fascinating but deeply flawed would-be epic.

NOT MUCH space is left for Scott Hicks’ eminently missable The Boys Are Back, a misbegotten fictionalisation of a how-to-bring-up-boys guide by The Independent‘s parliamentary sketch-writer Simon Carr. Presumably because of Hicks’ antipodean origins (he remains best known for 1996′s Shine) the story now takes place in sun-dappled Australia, where expat sportswriter Joe Warr (Clive Owen) is left as a clueless single parent by the tragically premature death of his wife Katy (Laura Fraser.)
   Rather like Malik’s “haunting” in A Prophet, The Boys Are Back sees Katy occasionally pop up as a figment of Joe’s grief-wracked imagination. And, given the raffish opulence of the family abode – one of those airy, rambling, clapboarded Aussie mini-mansions on the edge of rolling countryside – it’s easy to see why she’s so keen to hang around.
   Indeed, connoisseurs of prime Down Under real estate will be in clover – likewise anyone with a penchant for clumsily-developed, life-lesson tearjerkers about good-looking, well-heeled folk whose children are prone to mildly wayward dysfunction. It’s certainly nice to look at (cinematographer Greig Fraser also shot Jane Campion’s Bright Star and is currently working on Matt Reeves’ Stateside remake of Let the Right One In) but the Audi-advert glossiness ultimately proves somewhat wearing.
   This is even before a third act which pivots on some decidedly hokey plot-developments, including Joe covering the Australian Open tennis watching it on television, and a daft episode involving a wild house-party thrown during one of his regular absences. “Life is a journey that must be travelled no matter how hard the road,” as Joe drones in voice-over at the start. The Boys Are Back, conversely, is one cinematic journey which be safely eschewed.

Neil Young
12th January, 2010

written for the 21st January issue of :  

A PROPHET : [6/10] : Un prophète : France 2009 : Jacques AUDIARD : 155m (BBFC) : seen at Gartenbaukino cinema, Vienna, 25th October 2009 (public show – complimentary ticket) Viennale / Vienna International Film Festival : [16/28]
Jigsaw Lounge Viennale 2009 index-page

THE BOYS ARE BACK : [4/10] : USA/Australia 2009 : Scott HICKS : 104m (BBFC) : seen at Empire cinema, Great Park, Birmingham, 2nd October 2009 (press show – 52nd CinemaDays event) : [9/28]