La Raison du plus faible (2006) - film review

Patrick, Robert and Jean-Pierre are three friends who pass their empty days playing cards, unable to find work in the industrial Belgian town where they live.  A newcomer, Marc, joins their group.  When the others learn that he has just been released from prison, they are inspired to mount a hold-up.  Having resolved to start a new life for himself, Marc is at first reluctant to get involved, but finally he is persuaded to offer his new friends the help they need to effect the robbery.  It is something he soon lives to regret...

The latest film from Belgian director Lucas Belvaux is this surprisingly effective mélange of film noir thriller, comedy and social drama – an unusual combination of genres if ever there was one.  Belvaux had previously won acclaim for his 2002 thriller Cavale (part of his celebrated 2002 Trilogy ), and it looks from this latest offering that this is the genre in which the director is most adept.  From the seductively sombre noir photography to the suspense-laden action sequences, Belvaux shows the meticulous precision and attention to detail of other masters of the policier genre (such as Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Deray).  Whilst references to earlier films abound, he also brings something new, a cruel touch of irony that is a hair’s breadth from self-mockery and farce.  The vulnerability and cackhandedness of his characters makes them endearingly realistic, but they also appear downright comical, and there’s something almost alarming about seeing such unpolished misfits caught up in what is otherwise a pretty tough film.

The film is slightly less successful as a social drama – some of the ideas (such as a poor family pinning its hopes on winning the lottery to buy a moped so that the mother doesn’t have to take the bus to work) just don’t quite ring true.  However, it does makes some worthy comments about the nature of a society where individuals become so disenfranchised that they see crime as an easy way out of their problems (an alternative to that other species of mass-delusion, the National Lottery).  The dehumanisation of society is brought home in the climactic ending, where, like something out of George Orwell’s "1984", combat police take control like unthinking automata, machines imposed by an unfeeling state to keep the troublesome proles in order.  There’s something mighty disturbing about a state which has far greater willingness to spend money on policing its citizens than on finding them gainful employment.  All in all, La Raison du plus faible is an engaging and thought-provoking film – a well-constructed thriller that makes a grimly pessimistic yet pretty accurate assessment of the fractured, morally bankrupt world we now live in.

© James Travers 2007

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