Les cowboys

Punters comparing"Les Cowboys," directed and co-written by Thomas Bidegain, to John Ford's classic western The Searchers are dreaming. A more accurate comparison, might be with an episode of the 50's TV series Father Knows Best, but with a gender role reversal. But if Agathe Dronne's Nicole Balland had become the central character and listened to, we would have had a much shorter picture, which in many ways, may have been a better thing.

Where the Ford parallel is most obvious, is with both films' focus on the obsessiveness of their central characters' search for family members over long periods of time. Ford's Ethan Edwards looks for his kidnapped niece, while Bidegain's father and son combo, search for 16 year old daughter Kelly, who has enigmatically disappeared after attending a French cowboy fair with her family. Nicole and the police appear generally happy that nothing untoward has occurred. But father Alain and vicariously (apparently) brother Kid, just can't let it go, even after the arrival of a brief letter from Kelly stating she is OK and wants to start an independent new life.

Les Cowboys is a film with more red herrings on show, than tinned fish cans on a supermarket's shelves. Twists turns and dead ends appear in the narrative which rather than build suspense and tension are frustratingly seemingly included to propel the plot along in myriad directions without any substantial pay - off. Alain's countless visits to various dubious intermediaries, including one to a gypsy camp where he behaves appallingly with unsurprising results. A Ministry representative's visit to the Ballard home, where little is spoken by any party. Kid's dalliance with a girlfriend in Afghanistan from whom he just walks away and then his odd meeting and throwing in with a shady American operator played by John C. Reilly, which almost seems as if it should be part of another movie.

Les Cowboys is not a total write - off. The acting is by and large quite good, though Finnegan Oldfield delivers a strangely, one note performance, as the adult Kid/Georges. This is probably under direction, but we end up none the wiser why after so many years he is still pursuing a sibling, who doesn't wish to be found, nor why his father Alain, dragged him around on some of their earlier escapades. Worthy of notice is the second half appearance of Ellora Torchia as Shazhana, who succeeds in creating the most interesting and sympathetic character in the story. The final scenes in Belgium are also quite well - handled, compared to much of the earlier storyline. Think Zodiac, without the air of menace.

Not so much as The Searchers, Les Cowboys attempts to deliver an epic family love story spanning a couple of continents and decades. But this is one long, uneven, plodding journey with characters who are undeveloped and who we are just not drawn too. Ultimately, if we are honest, one just has to ask the question, as to why didn't any one listen to the mother, who was obviously dialled in from the start. She definitely knew best.

I loved the picture. Especially the idea of French people having American Country Western cookouts in the French countryside. Does that really happen? Or was the western thing supposed to be consistent with The Searchers, the movie people here say this movie took after? Anyways, since the movie is about people's 15 year search for a daughter/sister, I would have liked to see some scenes showing what she was like at home, or why they cherished her, beyond blood. Instead we never hear a single word from her.

We do see the dad dancing with her, and apparently adoring her by the way he looks at her. But then the search isn't necessarily about love. When something or someone of yours goes missing or is taken, you want it back. There is pride involved.

In the case of the brother, it may have involved his need to carry on his dad's search. Maybe he was honoring his dad, more than trying to find a sister that didn't even want to be found.

Either way, it all wound up pointless, without spoiling anything. Perhaps that was what was so French about it. The existential conclusion.

I think they threw in the American actor to attract American viewers. It probably worked, although I don't think this thing made money. The photography is beautiful, the performances are right on target, and the political aspect is barely touched upon.

Perhaps the girl did what she did out of love, or the need for an identity. We will never know, because we didn't see enough about her home life. Although clearly her parents were loving and responsible people.

The performances of the dad and brother kept me in this. I felt their anxiety and was rooting for them. The grittiness was just enough without going over the top.

For many reasons, it is the film of the last scenes. Because it represents more vehicle for different states of soul, emotions, questions, a spoon of tension than a story itself. A man, his son and a mission who seems totaly vain. Death, pain, murder, a young woman and her killed husband, a shop and the answer desired so intense.

A film reminding the fine art of Finnegan Oldfield. And a sort of use of light who seems transforming the time in clay.

What makes young people from France or Belgium abandon everything, including their family, convert to Islam and travel to a strange country to lead a life filled with religion and old-fashioned values? It's a very urgent question, now that several western-born boys and even girls have decided to become jihadi's and fight in Syria.

The French film 'Lew Cowboys' is about such a girl. She doesn't travel to Syria, neither does she engage in violence, but she disappears suddenly with her Muslim boyfriend, leaving her father, mother and brother behind in fear and despair.

Her father decides to devote his life to the search for his daughter. For several years, he tries to follow every trace that can lead him to his daughter Kelly. Het becomes so obsessed that he risks his job, his marriage and eventually his life in order to find his daughter. Later on, the same goes for Kelly's brother.

The desperate search leads father and son from one shady informer to another. They follow traces in France, Belgium and Pakistan. The authorities soon give up the quest for the disappeared teenager, but thanks to their tenacity and some luck, the father and brother have enough clues to continue the search.

The quest is filmed in a neutral style, not providing a moral judgment of the girl's behaviour, but concentrating instead on the father's despair and the brother's obsession. The story is spread out over several decades, with the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London providing some indication of the time frame in which several scenes take place. The film's bottom line is a bleak one: when you spend your life searching for something, finding it in the end can be a bitter disappointment.

The relentless search. A movie about obsession and the meaning of one man's life. A young boy inherits his father's obsession and therefore the meaning to his life.

But when he actually achieves his "life goal" he realises that he has a new path to follow and that his obsession no longer has meaning. A fascinating study of how a life can be ruined by obsession but that even when absorbed, consumed completely, life can still steer you in another direction.

A powerful little movie. A powerful metaphor.