Destiny sets two strangers on a lethal collision course in Disco Boy, one of the more stylish and intriguing world premieres in the main Berlinale competition this year. Featuring rising German screen star Frank Rogowksi (Victoria, Transit, Passages) as a French Foreign Legion volunteer fighting armed ecological militants in Nigeria, writer-director Giacomo Abbruzzese’s beautifully shot debut feature is visually impressive but thin as drama, its continent-hopping plot hinting at deeper revelations that turn out to be hidden shallows. Drawing spurious parallels between jungle warfare and dancefloor hedonism, Disco Boy feels at times likes an Apocalypse Now (1979) remake directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.
All the same, the Paris-based Abbruzzese’s off-beat fantasy drama is enjoyable on its own terms, with compelling performances, imaginative visuals and a throbbingly sensual score by Vitalic, aka French electronic composer Pascal Arbez-Nicolas. Rogowski’s growing international profile should also help with further festival bookings and niche art-house appeal. If you are the kind of blue-sky thinker who believes the best way to heal the lingering wounds of European colonialism in Africa is to stage an energetic dance-off in a glitzy Parisian nightclub, then Disco Boy is definitely the film for you.
The seed for Disco Boy was planted a decade ago following a chance meeting at a Paris club between Abbruzzese and a classical dancer who had previously been a soldier. The director was struck by some unexpected parallels between these two wildly different vocations, notably the extreme physical discipline that both require. From that spark he developed a fictional, fable-like story that begins in gritty realist mode but gradually takes on a patina of magical realism.
Rogowski plays Aleksei, a Belarusian illegal immigrant who arrives in France after making the perilous river crossing from Poland to Germany, losing a close friend in the process. One of his few chances at gaining legal citizenship involves signing up to serve in the French Foreign Legion, but only after surviving a gruelling period of training which Abbruzzese depicts in raw, punishing detail.
Meanwhile, in Nigeria, a group of eco-rebels led by Jomo (Gambian actor Morr N’Diaye) are fighting to protect the Niger river delta from foreign companies and corporate polluters that are killing local communities. Off duty, between spectacular ritual dances with his sister Udoka (Ivorian artist and model Laetitia Ky), Jomo muses wistfully that he would have been a “disco boy”, a professional nightclub dancer, if his life had taken a different path. Abbruzzese treats his African characters as quasi-shamanic beings, their magical otherness signified by mismatched eye colours, a Eurocentric viewpoint that feels simplistic at best.
When the Nigerian militants ambush and kidnap a French citizen, the Foreign Legion become involved, drawing Aleksei into direct conflict with Jomo. Aleksei is forced to kill or be killed, but he is traumatised and haunted by his actions. On returning to Paris, he is left spellbound by a mysterious close encounter with Udoka in a nightclub. He tracks her down in a fuzzy attempt to make amends, which may well be a trap. It certainly has unexpectedly weird consequences.
The ace in Abbruzzese’s sleeve here is award-wining cinematographer Hélène Louvart (Happy as Lazzaro, The Lost Daughter), whose artistic flair is evident in almost every scene. Stand-out visuals include an extended aerial shot of Aleksei dangling from a helicopter over rolling rainforest, ravishing fantasy views of the Niger delta landscape (actually filmed on the French island of Réunion) and the pivotal clash between Aleksei and Jomo, which is shot using military-style thermal imaging, transforming lethal violence into a kind of hallucinatory psychedelic ballet. The recurring abstract collages of floating, whirling lights that punctuate the main action also create pockets of hushed, dreamlike beauty.
The key flaw of Disco Boy is not its surfeit of style, more its lack of substance. Abbruzzese seems to be grasping for some kind kind of profound statement about race and exile, guilt and redemption. But his characters are sketches at best, with no trace of interior emotional lives, detached from any wider political or moral hinterland. Indeed, the Paris-based director almost seems to be harking back to that super-glossy period in French cinema dominated by Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax, a loose movement scathingly branded “cinéma du look” by critic Raphaël Bassan in 1989.
In fairness, Disco Boy is not without its aesthetic pleasures and quality ingredients. Even performing a thinly written role in his non-native language, Rogowski brings his usual knife-blade intensity while N’Diaye and Ky both radiate relaxed confidence on camera. A brief scene in which a glamorous American reporter for Vice News sweeps into the Niger conflict zone for a voyeuristic interview with the rebels packed extra satirical punch in Berlin this week, where Sean Penn’s Vice-backed documentary about the war in Ukraine also premiered. Even the audaciously silly dancefloor finale may be a winking homage to Claire Denis’ Beau Travail (1999) a classic of French Foreign Legion cinema which also ended in an incongruously cheery disco-dance scene. If you strike a pose, and let your body go with the flow, Abbruzzese’s handsome debut is an engagingly bizarre trip, and rich in future promise.
Director, screenwriter: Giacomo Abbruzzese
Cast: Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laetitia Ky, Leon Lucev, Matteo Olivetti, Robert Wieckiewicz
Cinematography: Hélène Louvart
Editing: Fabrizio Federico, Ariane Boukerche, Giacomo Abbruzzese
Music: Vitalic
Choreography: Qudus Onikeku
Producers: Lionel Massol, Pauline Seigland
Production company: Films Grand Huit (France)
World sales: Charades
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Competition)
In French, English, Igbo, Polish
91 minutes
