Qu'un seul tienne et les autres suivront

Silent Voices

We saw this yesterday as part of the annual 2010 French Film Festival at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. As emotionally brutal as is one of the three parallel stories in this film, it was still a welcome relief from the nastiness of its festival predecessor, The Time of the Charity Fete is Over.

This amazing Cannes Award winning Best First Film was a terrific piece of work. I was fully absorbed into the three stories. A Moroccan widow journeys to Marseilles to find out why her son was murdered. A lovely middle class 17 year old falls in first-love with a charismatic street punk. A hapless spineless immigrant loser considers a money and life altering scheme that will have him exchanging places with a look-alike hard core criminal doing time. Aside from prison,all three stories shared a few common themes- leaving someone and being left, and inexplicable, deep, raw, soul-filled love. While the stories may have been reminiscent of others before them , the film was well scripted and the performances were 100% spot on.( I did feel that the film would have been much stronger if the last mentioned story were a different one; I just did not care about the loser, and it felt like his story, the least interesting of all to me, took the most time to tell.) I fully expect and hope to see the Moroccan woman, and the girl and boy, move on to become major stars. When they are on screen, your eyes are fully on them, and your heart is there too.

It makes perfect sense to me that the director , a most talented woman, Lea Fehner, grew up adjacent to a prison and worked with prisoners in her Social Work career. Her portrayal of these people and their lives, and the prison visiting days (all three stories share these)is completely documentary like in its authenticity. ( shudder. be thankful.) I look forward to her continued success.

Prison as axis of three lives.

A Moroccan widow looking for understand the death of her son.

A teenager girl falling in love with a presumed cool guy.

A loser front to strange opportunity being used for escape of a out law man looking like him.

Each story as portrait of deep loneliness and seed of a form of chance to sense of life.

The jail atmosphere, the steps of visit, the conversations as a sort of spider webs, the way to define small realities are virtues of this film precise crafted scene by scene about choices, desires , gestures and words changing near reality for each character.

Simple truths, impressive story of Morocan mother and the dialogue with the murderer of his son.

This French movie is, as we say in France, an ensemble film, that means a plot where different characters, different stories, fates, who have nothing to do one with the other, meet. It is exciting to watch and not that hard to follow. The editing is the main character in this kind of films where there is precisely no lead character. See what I mean? Characterization is purely awesome, acting flawless, with a then beginning Reda Kateb and Vincent Rottiers. It is a social drama, so typical in the French film industry. The element that will help those fates to meet is a prison. The female director was only twenty eight years old when she made this movie. An early talent for sure.

The whole atmosphere and surroundings are ideal for a drama movie, and even a bit closed on this dark side. Too much talks and not enough free silent moments for the feelings to sustain. Well worked out; even a bit tricky, disconcerting and I personally think that it's a weakness to fix the scenario with highly lucky events, but others might like. It's definitely worth watching for the drama fans. It seems to have some inspiration from the big Faith Akin's "Auf der anderen Seite". It brings a lot by its characters simplicity and realism, yet lacks an artistic touch and global homogeneity or links that would take it farther from documentary and short film spirit.