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BASTARDS

            “Bastards”, directed and co-written by Clair Denis (Chocolat, 35 Shots of Rum), is a neo-noir mystery that takes its time in peeling back the layers of the visceral and corrupt universe it creates. I’ll do my best to not reveal the finale, but consider spoilers alerted. The film visually vacillates between detachment and intimacy; zooming in and focusing on tiny details like hands clasping together, but holding back during intense, emotional moments of the film which distances the viewer from the volatile bursts. Some scenes are also almost entirely pitch black, letting the audience witness slivers of action if it happens enter the single lit portion of the screen. Denis tries to mirror the erratic push and pull of the visual component throughout the story itself, but she is far less successful here.

The film follows Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon) return home to help his sister Sandra (Julie Bataille) after the suicide of her husband (who is also an old friend of Marco’s), and an unnamed horror inflicted upon her daughter Justine (Lola Creton). While trying to uncover who hurt to his niece, Marco begins a relationship with his neighbor, who just happens to be the mistress of a man who may be the cause of all the drama. Some of the issues the film has are the minor mysteries that are built into the story, and are never quite resolved. Marco’s reasons for leaving the family shoe factory are brought up several times, without being revealed or discussed much at all. This would be fine if the camera wouldn’t linger on Marco’s face every time he mentions he left that world for another path in life, with not even a hint to satisfy as to why that might’ve been. The nature of the relationship between Laporte and Sandra’s husband is only barely touched upon in the climax of the film, and the connection of it all to Laporte’s mistress seems to be solely so there can be another story point for the movie to return to when Marco isn’t doing incredibly well in his amateur detective work.

A lot of what’s lacking here is character motivations. By keeping the audience at such a distance from the thought process and interrelationships of the characters, they come off as detached rather than deep. Why did Marco stop talking to his sister and best friend? Well, it doesn’t really matter, because it doesn’t really seem to matter to him. Justine is seemingly kidnapped out of the hospital, and we briefly get her mother’s anger at the hospital before she decides Justine will turn up, leaving Marco to be the only one to seek out her whereabouts. The romance between Marco and Laporte’s mistress occurs so rapidly with very little basis that the passion that (only sometimes) seems to exist between them is unfounded. Denis’s attempt at telling a story about family secrets and human depravity is reminiscent of 2010’s “Incendies”, with none of that film’s brutal vision and masterful interconnectivity. In “Bastards”, we get a film that’s dark for the sake of being dark, and has numerous slowly spinning plates instead of characters acting logically with any sort of depth behind their actions. -MG