Un petit frère reviews

A single mother moves from the Ivory Coast to Paris, trying to do right by her two sons, in the French filmmaker's emotionally acute, elegantly trisected second feature. By Guy Lodge.

Spanning 20 years from their arrival in France to the present day, the film is the moving chronicle of the construction and deconstruction of a family. Isabelle Pannetier. A translation may not be a sure thing in international cinema, but the questioning of this marketing tactic lies less in the indirectness of the correlation and more in the diminished relevance of the new name. While "A Little Brother" is also a title that invites questioning, its relevance does become unmistakably clear in the film's very final spoken line. All this is to say that the uncertainty surrounding how to label Mother and Son to an English-speaking demographic almost comes….

Un petit frère reviews

The film is broken down into three character-driven chapters; like a good book, we get to see different events from different perspectives. It is topped and tailed by a voiceover from the adult Ernest, the youngest of two sons who immigrate with their mother from the Ivory Coast to France in the late s. Rose Annabelle Lengronne is the focus of the first chapter. A single mother to Jean and Ernest, she finds herself sharing a box room — and a bed — with her children as they embark on their new life in Paris. The final chapter shows us the adult Ernest Ahmed Sylla and how the family dynamic has changed irrevocably over the years. Both Rose and Jean are characters that will no doubt cause a lot of conflicting opinions among viewers. Rose turns her nose up at life in Paris and, whilst she does exhibit plenty of doting mum behaviour, she does seem more intent on pursuing her own, individual fresh start. She uproots her children, taking them to Rouen, where they fend for themselves in a filthy, freezing apartment. She is often selfish and uninterested, only checking in with meaningless cliches about winning and success. Jean, in his teenage years, is seething at being left in a dingy flat, forced to ensure that his younger brother goes to school and gets to bed on time. His anger, barely concealable, is totally understandable, but his decisions are frustratingly poor. Mother and Son also benefits from a strong script. The chapter format works well in that we get to see the family at very different stages in their life. Chapter one sets up Rose as a vibrant young woman, seeking fun and adventure in her new surroundings. Her unglamorous work, as a hotel cleaner, is no doubt poorly paid and arduous.

Rose gets a job as a housecleaner, and must deal with sometimes imperious treatment from her hosts.

By Caspar Salmon. News, reviews and archive features every Friday, and information about our latest magazine once a month. When Rose, who has taken a job working as a room maid in a hotel, embarks on an affair with a married man, she moves Jean and Ernest to Rouen with her, leaving Jean to look after his younger brother during the week and returning from the capital at weekends. Here, the future that Rose has been so careful to carve out for her sons, and the family bond they share, based on impeccable manners and unquestioning hard work, look set to implode. The nuanced script sets Rose up for a journey into ever more obstinacy, showing how she cannot be a master of her own fate, and how the consequences of her decisions will ripple through the years. In her debut, Jeune Femme, the writer-director had shown a keen eye for comedy of manners with attitude and a barking wit; here, she adds a great gentleness of vision to those qualities.

A single mother moves from the Ivory Coast to Paris, trying to do right by her two sons, in the French filmmaker's emotionally acute, elegantly trisected second feature. By Guy Lodge. Nobody who has lived their entire life in one country can fully understand the strange, intimate disruption of emigrating as a family. When Rose enters an affair with married Frenchman Thierry Thibaut Evrard , and he offers to move the family to his hometown of Rouen, she leaps at the opportunity for escape; being a subsidized mistress, she reckons, still offers better prospects than the advances of fellow immigrants notably besotted charmer Jules Cesar, played by Jean-Christophe Folly in Paris. For Rose, meanwhile, a concrete sense of belonging eludes her as she cycles through homes and jobs and relationships, while her grounding identity as a mother is diminished by the sons spiraling away from her. Home Film Reviews. May 27, am PT.

Un petit frère reviews

But by fate, another family comes to spend some time with them, with their Read all 15 year old Tom is going to spend another calm summer with his parents and younger sister at their summer house. But by fate, another family comes to spend some time with them, with their 17 year old son Felix. Sign In Sign In. New Customer? Create account. Drama Romance. Directors Martin Escoffier Victor Habchy. Martin Escoffier Victor Habchy. See production info at IMDbPro.

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El relato es honesto e intransigente, basado en complejas relaciones entre personajes que no terminan de germinar. By Jonathan Romney. Youna De Peretti. Find out why you should become a member here. Although Ernest can barely remember life in the Ivory Coast, he is still marked out as an outsider. In addition he is an award-winning writer of fiction, whose stories have been published in many literary journals. His life is marked by the absence of Rose who spends weekdays working in Paris and the responsibility of taking care of Ernest now played by Kenzo Sambin. Reviewed at the Cannes Film Festival. Rose protests the admonishing tone, confidently signaling that the French are no better than her. In addition, he has worked as a film critic for both print and on-line publications, including Bonjour Paris and France Today. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. A matter of its broad scope? The chapter format works well in that we get to see the family at very different stages in their life. Serraille has the intelligence, or instinct, to let her actors act. A translation may not be a sure thing in international cinema, but the questioning of this marketing tactic lies less in the indirectness of the correlation and more in the diminished relevance of the new name.

By Lovia Gyarkye.

A Tunisian boyfriend is nice, and more than nice, but only for a temporary period. France TP. Expand the sub menu Docs. See All. Reviews Call Jane Review. Intergenerational, cultural, economic and gender rifts are all part of the narrative milieu, but none are paused with any sense of precision. Username or Email. You can see the resentment spreading like a cancer through her two boys as she breezes in and out of their lives. More in Reviews. Release Date. To help keep your account secure, please log-in again. As she stays with her sister while trying to get on her feet, she attempts to find stability through men, and eventually finds an affable enough suitor to move with her children to Rouen, where they can receive a better education. Spanning 20 years from their arrival in France to the present day, the film is the moving chronicle of the construction and deconstruction of a family. This item only. Review by pau.