Pretty funny! Between life and death by Giordano Gerdilini, presented at the opening of the Reims Polar Festival, is a noir film from noir that never even turns dark grey. A Spaniard exiled in Brussels (Antonio de la Torre, intense as rarely) leads the investigation into the death of his gangster son, hoping to find an impossible redemption when he saw him disappear under the wheels of the metro he drives .
An inspector camped by Marine Vacth and her gruff colleague played by Olivier Gourmet complete the distribution of a harsh work produced by the co-screenwriter of Miserables by Ladj Ly. “The thriller is more interesting when the characters are not just stereotypes of cops and gangsters,” says the director in the press kit. This father with a hallucinated look, carrying a past that is too heavy for him, is not a cliché as his interpreter brings him substance. All it takes is a look from Antonio de la Torre to make the viewer feel transfixed in their seat. His enemies do not lead off against this broken man.
Strong and well shaken
Brussels encompasses the hero in a universe evoking the American thrillers of the 1980s with their decor of brick buildings, wasteland and construction sites from which a hostile atmosphere very conducive to settling scores emerges. The filmmaker calls himself the James Gray of Little Odessa and it shows in the powerful way he films an exiled hero he doesn’t spare. It draws on the photography of Christophe Nuyens and the score of Laurent Garnier to carry the public into a pitiless world from which it emerges strong (and well) shaken.