FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL: A single glance at the face of Joseph, one of the two titular leads in filmmaker Xavier De Choudens’ minimalist thriller, and you know that crime does not pay. As played by veteran character actor and musician Jacques Dutronc, Joseph emerges from prison with a long, drawn face that is traversed by ridges and depressions, topped by greying hair, so that he appears to have been drained of his very vitality. The one-time professional thief could be a ghost, but then that would too easy – his humanity is still there, buried beneath, and the movie makes a mystery not just of Joseph will do next, but what lies under that desiccated surface.
De Choudens’ feature, his second, ties back into the golden age of French crime films in the 1950s. Like the protagonist of Jules Dassin’s Rififi, Joseph is just out of jail, and as with the title character of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur, he has his eyes on a casino as his next target. But Joseph is defined not by his force of personality, nor his need for revenge – he’s an essay in solitude that Dutronc keeps at an inscrutable distance.
Part of his insularity stems from his casino heist being the brainchild of a cellmate, Jean, who has passed away while incarcerated. When Joseph arrives at the late man’s house, key in hand, he finds it in the possession of Jean’s estranged daughter, petty criminal Julie (Hafsia Herzi), who alongside her boyfriend, Franck (Denis Menochet) is literally looking for the plan, unaware that it exists solely in Joseph’s head after Jean made him memorise it. The ageing man and the young woman begin as rivals, but realise that Jean meant for them to work together, and that sense of roiling allegiance never quite dissipates.
Hafsia Herzi was one of several revelations in Abdellatif Kechiche 2007 celebrated independent release The Secret of the Grain, and here, as Julie, she’s not afraid to explore the childish anger of the young woman. Feeling like an intruder in her late father’s house – she never knew it existed while he was alive – she strides into scenes and tries to establish some kind of primacy. Julie challenges Joseph but he is preternaturally calm; when she presents herself as a sexual conquest he demurs. She makes her pettiness, as it wanes and is replaced by acceptance, genuinely moving.
De Choudens presents the procedural element of the duo’s preparation with a minimum of detail, because he wants you to realise that no matter what they discover – or which of Joseph’s former colleagues may be watching – they’ll go through with the scheme, because there simply is nothing else available to them. Jean’s plan – he helped build crucial elements of the casino – is a lifeline for the pair as well as a risk. In such circumstances the director pares back overt nods to style: the lighting is natural, the score virtually extinguished. The film is in their brief exchanges, sombre glances and unspoken need for something to go right, no matter what the cost. And it works.
