The Son (film)
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| The Son | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Jean-Pierre Dardenne Luc Dardenne |
| Release date(s) | 2002 |
| Running time | 103 min. |
| Country | Belgium / France |
| Language | French |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Son (French: Le Fils) is a 2002 film directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne.
The practice of work is central to Le fils (The Son), a deceptively complex movie about revenge and redemption. The film, like all of the Dardennes’, seems straightforward enough: Olivier, a carpenter (played by Olivier Gourmet, who, like Duquenne, earned an acting prize at Cannes), takes on a young man named Francis as an apprentice. Francis is newly released from juvenile detention, and Olivier slowly discovers that Francis played a part in the death of his son some years earlier. Francis is unaware of the connection he shares with Olivier, and the Dardennes’ use this asymmetrical relationship to investigate the ideas of forgiveness and vindication. “For all its quasi-documentary materialism, The Son is ultimately a Christian allegory of one man's inchoate desire to return good for evil.” In this way Le fils is something of a departure from the Dardennes’ earlier work: it’s not the sort of movie that gets labor legislation named after it. Olivier’s carpentry is observed with unstinting and careful detail; it is not a means for sustenance but a means for existence. “It is hardly surprising that the Dardennes put together their naturalist fable with such a fanatical, self-effacing sense of craft. They are obsessed with work in the way that some of their European counterparts are obsessed with sex: the textures and rhythms of manual labor are, for them, at once irreducibly physical and saturated with an almost spiritual significance.”
Olivier Gourmet received the Prix d'interprétation masculine du Festival de Cannes in 2002 for his portrayal of the tormented Olivier.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Le Fils at dardenne-brothers.com
- Le Fils at the Internet Movie Database
- The Son at Allmovie
- Le Fils at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films
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