After premiering in Cannes with their first two films, French sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin have arrived in Venice, in the main competition, with their third feature Jouer avec le feu, known is English as The Quiet Son (presumably because the top results when googling the literal translation Playing With Fire have to do with a terrible firefighter comedy starring John Cena). Rooted in the current political landscape, the film is likely to find an audience on the arthouse circuit thanks to its stark topicality.
The story takes place in present day Villerupt, in the Grand Est region of France (the same general area as another Gallic comp entry in this year’s Venice, And Their Children After Them), near the border with Luxembourg and Germany. Pierre, a middle-aged widower, has two sons: Félix, known as Fus (from the German Fussball, soccer, a sport he used to be particularly good at), and Louis, nicknamed Loulou. The former is an unemployed metal worker, the latter a high school senior with his sights set on the Sorbonne.
Tensions rise within the family when Fus, under the guise of reconnecting with former schoolmates, starts hanging out with a group whose political leanings are explicitly, unequivocally far-right (one picture shows them wearing sweaters with the slogan “Fascists do it better”). And as per the English title, this leads to increasingly awkward silences between father and son.
With his distinctive sad and weary facial features, which make him a live-action Droopy and the living emblem of socially conscious French cinema, Vincent Lindon is perfectly cast as Pierre, a part he wears as though it were an extension of the roles he played in Stéphane Brizé’s triptych about workers’ rights. Benjamin Voisin, who gained international attention thanks to François Ozon’s Summer 85 and Xavier Giannoli’s Lost Illusions, adds intensity as Fus, but the stealth MVP is Stefan Crapon, another Ozon veteran (Peter Von Kant) and Voisin’s former roommate, in the seemingly thankless part of Loulou, who is caught in the verbal crossfire and disagrees with his brother’s ideological transformation while also berating his father for being too domineering.
Having first made a name for themselves with the female-centric 17 Girls, the Coulin sisters change gears with a story, based on a novel by Laurent Petitmangin, that is very much about a masculine world, as a result of Pierre’s decision to essentially build a microcosm around his two sons. The domestic walls are a prison of the soul, an aspect cinematographer Frédéric Noirhomme captures especially well in night-time scenes where the youths, both passably athletic, silently climb from one floor to another, rather than going up or down the stairs, in order to sneak around.
As the familial bond cools, the tone also gets increasingly bleak (one of the rare touches of understated humor is when Loulou has to explain to Pierre how Instagram comments work), with a very in-your-face approach that perhaps derives its urgency from the real-world context the film alludes to via news reports about right-wing re-emergence on a global level.
In that sense, it is particularly commendable that the bulk of the movie is set away from Paris, with the French capital treated as an alien entity compared to the blue-collar Grand Est environment that is more vulnerable to such political turmoil, adding a layer of factual honesty that would perhaps have rung hollow had the filmmakers stuck to what some of their peers have termed the “Parisianism” of French cinema. In fact, while the Sorbonne is brought up as a safety net for Louis, the third act comes as a stark reminder of how it may be too late for the whole family, the unspoken struggles serving as a tacit indictment of a certain socio-political apathy.
Directors & Screenwriters: Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin
Cast: Vincent Lindon, Benjamin Voisin, Stefan Crepon
Producers: Marie Guillaumond, Olivier Delbosc, Bastien Sirodot
Cinematography: Frédéric Noirhomme
Production design: Yves Fournier
Costume design: Julia Dunoyer
Music: Pawel Mykietyn
Sound: Emmanuelle Villard, Titouan Dumesnil, Olivier Goinard, Lucien Richardson
Production companies: Felicita, Curiosa Films, France 3 Cinéma, Umedia
World sales: Playtime
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
In French
110 minutes
