The Lost Son

It is interesting that "8MM," with a plot so similar, came out the same year. I found this film more interesting and believable and far less dark and stomach-turning. It is well-filmed and acted with some interesting locations. The tension is well-metered. I enjoyed the colorfulness of the filming. The cosmopolitan/European flavor lends a great deal. I enjoyed the music as well. I would see this film again with a friend.

Auteuil is magnificent as the French loner who has somehow become a lost soul among the shadows of London's West End. The private detective, who discovers the cracks in his own life though an investigation that leads him through the seedy underworld of the child prostitution trade, takes us through the shoking stages of his discovery with much suspense. One of the best modern detective stories to have been filmed in London for many years and a film that deserves much better attention than it got when first released.

Daniel Auteil gives a commanding performance as a French private investigator working in London following self imposed exile from Paris following the murder of his family. Making ends meet through a combination of blackmail of those involved in extra marital affairs and fees from their partners, Auteil is a weary character with little joy or passion in life, with the exception of football, and his friendship with a fellow French exile, Nathalie a high class prostitute. However when he takes on a case looking for the missing son of a wealthy industrialist, he finds himself embroiled in the sordid world of the child sex trade. A gripping story with good performances all round, especially from Auteil, this film tackles a taboo subject in a sensitive yet realistic fashion. Auteil's unorthodox methods to secure information should fill an audience with revulsion, yet in this situation, they seem entirely appropriate. Excellent if at times uncomfortable viewing.

I just watched this film on DVD, and sought it out because I love Daniel Auteil's acting.

This film felt very French to me in its cinematography and overall styling, although largely London based, and shot mainly in English.

The acting throughout was excellent, perhaps with the exception of Ciaran Hinds' Brazilian/American/Irish accent! Ciaran plays the lost son's brother in law, who brings Lombard, the French private detective living in London, in to try to solve the case of the disappearance.

The film does deal with a very sensitive subject, but I felt it did so sensitively, showing how an empire can be brought down by one man, if he feels strongly enough to sacrifice everything he has.

There are some very violent scenes, and they are wholly central to the script, highlighting how low Lombard's character, is brought by his passion and anger at what horrors he has uncovered in a paedophile ring, involved in the disappearance of the lost son. Lombard makes moral decisions throughout the film that are understandable and I feel that this is a very powerful film.

The late Katrin Cartlidge puts in a very strong performance, supporting Lombard's character in his ultimate revenge plot. Lombard's "tart with a heart" best friend, Marianne Denicourt, is excellent in a stunning bitter-sweet role, and Billie Whitelaw is fabulous as the stern, businesslike matriarch, whose lost son is being sought by Lombard, and who also comes to terms with tragic loss, as Lombard also must. Auteuil, as always, is credible, beautiful and gives a very moving performance. Although it took me a few minutes to get over his English "voice"!

In my opinion, this must be one of the best international, cross-over, thrillers in recent years.

The Lost Son (1999)

All the elements are here for a classic noir-inspired investigation movie where no one is to be trusted and our leading man is a likable, steady, world weary paradigm. If you are familiar with "The Big Sleep" with Bogart and crew, you might actually get a sense of what this movie is trying to do. Not only does the plot begin in a similar way, with a rich family saying one of their members (the son) is missing and with the daughter being a steamy and somewhat unreliable secondary force (played by Nastassja Kinski), but then the rest of the movie proceeds to get increasingly confusing.

In "The Big Sleep" this is almost a positive thing, making it fast, visual, and experiential (meaning you get sucked into the world and can't stop looking and trying to keep up). Here, in "The Lost Son," it isn't what anyone would call fast, which hurts it because the complexity builds and the suspicions fester with lots of lulls, either whole short scenes that don't seem quite necessary or with an editing that makes every little cut one or two seconds too long. Which adds up to a kind of pace some people might like, a loitering and inhabiting this strange little nether world the movie creates. But for me it just made me fuzz out a little.

The leading detective, Xavier Lombard, is played by the really compelling French actor, Daniel Auteuil. He carries the movie even through it's pauses. Besides Kinski, whose role is small (and thankfully, really--she doesn't really "act" so much as say her lines), there is a second male lead, the Irish actor Ciaran Hinds, who is quite good. (He had a terrific role in the peculiar and enjoyable "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.") And the filming is rather nice, with a huge range of scenes and moods, held together not only by the camera-work, but the solid directing by Chris Menges.

There will be an odd feel to this film for some American viewers, because it's an increasingly common hybrid of French and British filmmaking--language, crew, cast, and locations all spread out from one side of the Channel to the other. It's nicely European, but less of that familiar "British" film that many people know (or know without knowing they know it, looking vaguely like Hollywood). In short, this has a slightly fresh look. It does not however feel as new or odd or wonderful as some of the detective crime films coming out of, say, Scandinavia, among the European types.

This matters only in that half of the film is its atmosphere. The plot and some of the core acting could use a bolstering and maybe even a sense of necessity at times (the movie just keeps going through its attractive paces), but in all, it might even be a film you'd enjoy more the second time. Which says a lot.