"Astrakan" -- Movie Review

 

On the first weekend of the New Directors/New Films festival, I attended the U.S. Premiere of the new French drama “Astrakan” by director David Depesseville. 

Synopsis

When an orphaned boy is taken in by foster parents, will he be able to fit in with his new family?

Story

Samuel, a boy in early adolescence, suddenly finds himself in an unfamiliar circumstance.  With his father dead at the hands of the police and his mother – well, that’s something of a mystery – he has no one to take care of him.  After living in a government-run facility, he’s taken in by foster parents Marie and Clement, who live in a rural area of France.  They take him in not because they wanted another son (they already have two boys) but because they are poor and need the money the government pays them to care for Samuel.  Neither one of them keep it a secret from Samuel that they resent having to take him in and he’s reminded daily that he’s unwelcome in their home.

At school, Samuel isn’t faring much better – it doesn’t seem like he has many friends.  However, one day, Hélène shows up at his door – she’s a classmate of Samuel’s and asks permission for him to come over to her house to play.  Samuel goes home with her, but it soon becomes evident that Hélène has romantic designs on him.  This is a new experience for him – feeling a bit uncomfortable, he heads home.  Eventually, they become more comfortable with each other and he sees her as his girlfriend – at least until he discovers her being particularly friendly with another boy in their class. 

Marie and Clement are feeling a bit overwhelmed taking care of Samuel and decide to drop him off at her parents’ house for a while so they can take a break; Luc, Marie’s brother, also lives there.  It seems that he may have sexual feelings toward Samuel, which he is also careful to elude.  After Samuel returns home, he finds out that Luc has died in a car accident.  At the funeral, Samuel does something unforgivably outrageous.  By now, Marie and Clement are at their wits’ end.  If they return Samuel to social services, they won’t have to deal with anymore headaches – but if they do so, they won’t be able to collect the money they’re taking for foster care.  What will they decide? 

Review

No doubt about it, “Astrakan” is a difficult film to watch for a number of reasons.  For one thing, seeing this boy physically abused by his foster father is tough to witness.  But there are other things that are of a more technical nature that add to the difficulty.  There’s very little in the way of backstory here and it can take the viewer a while to get one’s footing in the story.  Who is Samuel?  Why is he here?  How did he manage to get here?  Additionally, Samuel’s behavior is so weird that it’s quite a challenge to root for him, although clearly that’s precisely what the audience is supposed to be doing. 

Speaking of for whom the audience should be getting behind, sometimes you feel as though it’s the foster parents, despite how egregious their own behavior towards Samuel may be.  Why?  Because Samuel is so hard to deal with (especially when compared to their own sons) that you can certainly understand their frustration.  Other reasons why this film is challenging (in a bad way) is that there are a great many tonal shifts throughout the story, especially at the end.  This can be incredibly disconcerting and doesn’t serve the movie well at all.  It is not only a rollercoaster ride that takes you up and down, but also side-to-side. 

In a post-screening interview, director David Depesseville said that the Director of Photography, a friend who worked on previous films, suggested early on that for his first feature film, Depesseville should shoot on film.  Specifically, they settled on 16mm because its blurriness had something of a soft, gentle quality to it while HD digital video would’ve been just too raw. Depesseville decided to make the viewer an active participant in the film, which is one of the reasons many people describe it as elliptical.  He prefers to have the viewers make up their mind about what’s going on in the movie, particularly in its last sequence.