Clément Cogitore is less known in France as a feature filmmaker than as young and highly coveted visual artist, with shorts like the Siberia-set documentary, Braguino, and the crunk dance battle/opera piece Les Indes galantes — both released in 2017 — sealing his reputation in the museum world much more than on the big screen.
Already present in the Cannes Critics’ Week seven years ago with the supernatural War in Afghanistan movie, The Wakhan Front, he returns to the sidebar with a special screening of his second feature, Son of Ramses (Goutte d’or). Both films share similar qualities and defects, with promising pitches that intriguingly combine several disparate elements, but can’t necessarily stay the length of a 90-minute-plus narrative.
This work, however, benefits from an engrossing, semi-unhinged performance from star Karim Leklou (The World is Yours), who steals the show as a marabout, or clairvoyant, scamming clients in Paris’ dicey northern quartiers before experiencing an actual vision that transforms him. Cogitore’s renown at home should help garner the film some followers, while overseas action may be limited to fests and streaming.
The movie’s first half is much stronger than its second, which is unfortunate because Son of Ramses starts off as one of the best things Cogitore has directed to date. In the captivating early sequences, Ramses (Leklou) swindles people who wait for hours in his stuffy apartment so he can help them communicate with the dead, among other powers he claims to possess. At first, we too wonder what he’s capable of, and only after some time does Cogitore reveal how Ramses rather ingeniously works his magic.
Leklou is magnetic in those scenes, and we can see why clients — grieving relatives for the most part — are willing to pay Ramses hundreds of Euros per séance, eating up his every last word. The actor, who has grown in stature over the past years, with leading roles in Roman Gavras’ The World is Ours and Cédric Jimenez’s The Stronghold, manages to hold the screen with his creepy yet alluring presence, including in group sessions where he transfixes a room filled with dozens of believers.
But Ramses’ powers are in jeopardy: not only are the neighborhood’s other clairvoyants jealous of his success, like drug dealers who each want to keep their own territory, but there is a band of homeless kids who keep breaking into his apartment. It’s unsure which way the film will turn at the midway point, until Ramses finds himself — perhaps under a spell cast by a rival marabout — magically transported to a construction site at night, where he uncovers the dead body of one of the street kids.
From then on, the intrigue feels like it digresses more than it coheres, trailing the psychic as he reaches out to the victim’s brother and befriends the young gang, who hail from Morocco and mostly speak in Arabic. Much like the gritty Parisian neighborhood where the film is set, and from which it takes its French-language title, the kids are realistically portrayed — there are indeed bands of young Moroccan immigrants roaming that part of the city — but they don’t add enough momentum to the plot, which was more compelling when it focused on Ramses’ massive fraud.
You can tell what Cogitore is trying to get at here, showing a conman facing both real magic for the first time and the chance to finally do something good and honest in his life. But the film’s closing reels feel muddled and never reach the dramatic apex the director was aiming for, even if Leklou remains totally convincing till the very end.
The rest of the cast, including all the vibrant tweens who play the kids, and the Algerian actor Ahmed Benaïssa, who passed away toward the start of Cannes and plays Ramses’ father, contribute to the authenticity level. Cinematography by Sylvain Verdet has that off-the-cuff, handheld feel of many a French movie, which Cogitore combines with sound design that lends a surreal dimension to the action. Like much of his previous work, Son of Ramses often feels like a documentary in which the stranger realms of fiction burst forth and ultimately take over.
Director, screenplay: Clément Cogitore
Cast: Karim Lelkou, Malik Zidi, Ahmed Benaïssa, Elsa Wolliaston, Jawad Outouia, Elyes Dkhissi, Yilin Yang, Loubna Abidar
Producer: Jean-Christophe Reymond
Cinematography: Sylvain Verdet
Production design: Chloé Cambournac
Costume design: Isabelle Pannetier
Editing: Isabelle Manquillet
Music: Benjamin Esdraffo
Production company: Kazak Productions (France)
World sales: MK2
Venue: Cannes (Critics’ Week)
In French, Arabic
98 minutes
