Deux frères (2004) - film review

Indochina in the 1920s.  In the jungles of Angkor, two tiger cubs are born amidst the ruins of an ancient temple, an exotic location which becomes their home.  The ruins attract men from the West who begin to break up the ancient temples and sculptures to sell them in Europe at great profit.  The two cubs are separated – one ends up in a circus, the other is adopted by the son of a local price.  Will they ever see each other again?

Sixteen years after he made L’Ours, a powerful natural history drama about a grizzly bear and a stray bear cub, Oscar winning director Jean-Jacques Annaud treads similar ground with Deux frères, this time following the exploits of two tiger cubs in the jungles of French-occupied Indochina.  As in L’Ours, Annaud succeeds masterfully in humanising the animals whilst animalising the humans in his film, so that our sympathies do not stray too far from the two stars in his drama, the two loveable tiger cubs.  The film is beautifully shot, with Jean-Marie Dreujou’s cinematography capturing the splendour of the natural world whilst evoking the era in which the film is set.

It feels churlish to criticise Deux frères because it is a film that, whilst perhaps awkwardly sentimental in some places, is one that is made with great love and sincerity.  However, whilst the film has some great strengths, it is marred by a mediocre script which offers the most contrived plot imaginable and fails to make any of the human protagonists in the drama remotely convincing.  By dividing our attention between the tiger cubs and the humans, the film loses much of its focus and coherence.  How much better the end result would have been if the film had been centred more on the tiger cubs, with everything we see presented from their point of view.  Despite its obvious faults, Deux frères is an attractive film that is moving and, at times, hilariously funny, although it will perhaps appeal most to youngsters, who should find it a somewhat less anodyne alternative to comparable offerings from Disney.  This is a poignant and poetic work which offers a heart-felt plea for man to respect the natural world and not merely exploit it for his immediate selfish advantage.

© James Travers 2008

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