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CANNES 2013 Un Certain Regard / France

Who are the Bastards?

by 

- With her 11th film, French director Claire Denis presented a somber, sensual work against a backcloth of traumatic revenge in Un Certain Regard at the 66th Cannes Film Festival

With her 11th film, French director Claire Denis presented a somber, sensual work against a backcloth of traumatic revenge in Un Certain Regard at the 66th Cannes Film Festival. When his sister tells him of her husband's bankruptcy and suicide, Marco (Vincent Lindon) returns from the far side of the world and moves into the apartment next door to that Raphaëlle (Chiara Mastroianni). Raphaëlle is the concubine of a rich old man, the suspected perpetrator of sordid sexual violence on the person of Marco's niece, played by Lola Créton (Something in the Air [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Assayas
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). A carnal relationship develops between Raphaëlle and Marco, who is trying to help his sister deal with the bankruptcy while premediting revenge on the perverted old man.

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Bastards [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
is an unstructured tale which wraps its family drama in a sordid imbroglio, in which good and evil merge into one. While rather subtle, the characters are not treated in any depth and the director leaves enough blanks in her fragmented construction for the spectator to give the story his own judgement and interpretation. As for the directing, close-ups on faces take precedence, as if to offer a closer reading of a priori intentions hidden by the two main protagonists. It's true that the audience does not always understand the reasons behind their actions, sometimes all for the better. Marco's supposed revenge, for example, is never clearly formulated. This way of handling the characters finds its justification in a finale which may surprise, even if it does not entirely convince due to  its foundation. For the film's original soundtrack, Claire Denis benefits from the talent of the Tindersticks whose solemn, melancholic compositions weigh positively on the ambiance. One leaves Bastards with the confirmation of formal expertise on the part of a director who would have benefited from showing a little more ambition for the content, though there is a dark, unwholesome beauty in her non-Manichean approach to the hero confronted by adversity.

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(Translated from French)

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