I can't believe there's any love.

Bastards
Claire Denis 2013 France
Starring: Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Michel Subor, Lola Crèton, Julie Bataille, Alex Descas



Claire Denis has form when it comes to mixing intimacy and violence and, in most cases, it works - her Beau Travail, for example, was one of the best French films of the 90's - but unfortunately here she comes unstuck, creating a work just too oblique and mysterious, particularly considering its extremity. It's not that the acting's bad (in fact it's mostly excellent) or even that it's a bad film, it's simply that somehow it's just not that interesting. There are action sequences but the major plot points remain unseen and what we do see isn't ever explained so some scenes just seem to happen without much reason or narrative necessity. For example, at one point the main character played by Vincent Lindon has a fierce physical showdown with two men resulting in his hand being heavily bandaged for the next hour or so. Again, it's well filmed and carried out but the problem is that we've no idea who these men are, what their importance to the story is or even why the fight is happening. Similar problems occur with the subplot featuring a wholly underused Lola Crèton. The first time she's shown she's walking the streets of Paris as if in a trance naked bar her high heels with blood running down her legs. Later it's finally revealed to be a flashback but at first look it appears to have been slotted in alongside other night-time scenes as if it follows them in the narrative. As it happens high heels actually feature a lot and it's a nice irony that Lindon's Marco has left his career as a sailor to attend to his family's bankrupt shoe company (at least at first) and the two people wearing heels the most are his traumatised niece (Crèton) in one of the more distressing scenes of the film and Chiara Mastroianni's Raphaëlle, who is the mistress of the man apparently responsible for the business' downfall. There's a lot of fetishism here, not least in the supposedly broke Marco's liking for crisp, new, beautifully white $400 shirts and the focus on fast cars. The shirts also create a pleasing juxtaposition with both the journey Marco is being forced into and the grime of the backstreets of Paris. Perhaps the oddest thing though is that the 'bastard' of the title actually turns out to be the most sensible and 'normal' person in the film while every other character is either brutal, weak, exploitative, repugnant, vile, criminal, addicted to a veritable banquet of vices or, in the case of Raphaëlle, just prone to bad decisions. Even her liberating affair with Marco leads to her having to betray her morals to retain her current life. Everyone does really and overall it all seems so futile. Maybe that's the point but there are much better ways of making it. At its best the film is harrowing, somnambulant and inventive but at its worst, particularly in Marco and Raphaëlle's rough but surprisingly unnoticed fuck in the hallway of their building, it's pretty improbable. I'm still wild about Chiara though.