01/12/2007

Morning in a Parisian apartment. Little Lino, an independent spirit, climbs out of his cot and goes to wake up his “daddy”, who is still fast asleep.

This is no traditional father-son scene however, as we gradually discover. The circumstances of this man’s unusual relationship with the boy, whose mother very recently passed away, are partly revealed through his phone calls to the local council.

The child’s apparent guardian is in fact an unwilling one, and the story thus follows his efforts to find Lino’s real father amongst the woman’s line of previous lovers, hoping to get the man to accept responsibility for his son. Along the way, we learn pieces of information about ‘Emilie’ (who nevertheless remains mysterious: we see only a quick glimpse of her photo, gripped in the man’s hand) and her troubled past; involving drugs, flings with multiple lovers, and a handgun kept in her underwear drawer…

Lino develops into both an intriguing mystery and a portrait of a man wracked with grief. The protagonist is torn between a genuine emotional attachment to the child and care for his welfare on the one hand, and the unbearable weight of his grief and his sudden new responsibility on the other. He keeps his head down, hidden under a baseball cap, as if ashamed - or afraid - to meet the gaze of others.

The central relationship and dilemma of the film are treated with great sensitivity, the ‘verité’ style allowing for a certain ambiguity and complexity, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions. Unfortunately the somewhat uninspiring photography and unnecessarily slow pace of the action let down what could have been a very compelling narrative.