(Belgium/France/Luxembourg, 84 min.)
Dir. Bouli Lanners, Writ. Bouli Lanners, Elise Ancion
Starring: Martin Nissen, Zacharie Chasseriaud, Paul Bartel
It’s been a refreshingly youthful year at the European Union
Film Festival in 2013. Not only has the CFI’s programme offered a wide range of
films both about and for audiences of all ages, but the selected films have also
had a decidedly contemporary vibe, as their digital video style pulses with
energy, electro-pop scores. It seems fitting, then, to wind down the festival
with the old school 35mm charm of Belgium’s The
Giants. All the coming-of-age tales at the festival improve upon a
prototype to which this little film seems wholly indebted. The Giants, which tells of three lost boys finding their way by the
river, adds a taste of Huckleberry Finn
(or even The Little Rascals) to the
closing days of the festival.
This film by Bouli Lanners, which topped the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes 2011, is very much in the vein of Huckleberry Finn’s cinematic descendants such as Stand By Me or this year’s Mud. It’s a tale of boys will be boys, and of coming of age while traversing that ever muddy and symbolic river that flows through the land of misfit boys. The three lost boys of The Giants are brothers Seth and Zak, played by Martin Nissen and Zacharie Chasseriaud respectively, and their friend Danny, played by Paul Bartel.
Seth and Zak are home alone in their rural Belgian township
as their parents abandon them to go work for an embassy in the city. Their
absentee parents have left them without food or money, so Seth and Zak pillage
the neighbours’ supplies like the kids from The
Bling Ring and enjoy the odd lark with other people’s booze and clothes
too.
Danny doesn’t have any better guidance or direction, since
he’s under the care of his older brother. Danny’s hooligan elder is a big bad
wolf with ties to the drug trade. He keeps angry dogs on a leash and stomps
around, hitting things with a bat to scare off the three little kids.
Echoes of fables and fairy tales resonate throughout The Giants as Seth, Zak, and Danny find
a kind of peace and escape in the deep woods surrounding their homes. Like the
kids of a bedtime story, these three boys live in a world mostly void of
responsible adults (save for one nice lady played by Marthe Keller), who might
as well live in a gingerbread house. (The European homes certainly look
accommodating for the likes of Hansel and Gretel.)
Lanners finds a lighthearted playfulness, though, with which
to tell this sad story. The cinematography by Jean-Paul de Zaeytijd finds a
faint elegiac tone in the pastoral landscape. The river itself assumes a life
force thanks to the shots that crane along the water as the boys find their
way. Ditto the folky song score by The Bony King of Nowhere, which adds a
poignant note to the trio’s frisky story of thwarted adolescence. The songs
especially lead The Giants to evoke
comparison to Jeff Nichols’ Mud, as
the film is driven by the lyrics much as the mellow songs by Ben Nichols
elevated Mud.
Unlike Mud,
though, there is no adult to steal the show. The Giants rests squarely on the shoulders of its three young leads
and they carry the film admirably. Lanners lets his three talented young actors
play in a world where make believe and fantasy don’t exist. Their game is
survival. These actors seem to be having a blast playing the roles of the three
wandering youths. They’re having fun, as kids should, but the power of The Giants comes through the subtly of
their performances as their skills evolve and the kids they play grow into
young men.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
The Giants screens in Ottawa at the European Union Film Festival on Saturday, November 30th at 9:00 pm at
Library and Archives Canada (395 Wellington St.)
It screens at
Vancouver’s EUFF
on December 5th at 8:20 pm.
