Le Frère du guerrier (2002) - film review

Thirteenth Century France.  When his mother dies, Arnaud honours her wish to carry on the family tradition of preparing herbal medicines for the local community.  One day, his home is attacked by bandits and he is left in a coma for three days.   When he regains consciousness, he cannot speak and seems not to recognise his wife, Guillemette, or his children.  Realising that the family may have lost its livelihood, Guillemette tracks down Arnaud’s brother, Thomas, who has spent the past years as a mercenary warrior.  Together, Guillemette and Thomas set about finding a book which will tell them how to make medicine.  But the quest proves far harder than expected, and the clergy are insistent that all written knowledge belongs to them, not to peasants.  Meanwhile, the bandits haven’t finished with Arnaud.  When Thomas kills one of their number, the others are determined to have their revenge...

Not for the first time, director Pierre Jolivet offers us a surprising and challenging piece of cinema, this time a gritty fantasy-drama set in the Middle Ages.  Although historical dramas occupy a major place in French cinema, this is one period which is rarely portrayed, and this is perhaps why films set in this time always have a certain fascination.  The setting is so unfamiliar, so beyond our own experiences, that it really does feel like the stuff of fantasy.  Jolivet and his crew do an excellent job in recreating a period which is renowned for its brutality and human suffering, the raw location photography and savage fight scenes bringing a keen sense of realism which, in a few sequences, is shockingly visceral.

All is not perfect however.  Whilst the film is technically a great achievement, it is dramatically quite weak.  Admittedly it’s easy to sympathise with the plight of the spirited heroine Guillemette (played with great sincerity by the adorable Mélanie Doutey), but there isn’t much else in the script to sustain our interest, and even the fight sequences – brilliant as they are – become a little repetitive after a while.   In a sense, the film is like the period it portrays – there’s a hard physicality but a lack of depth and real human feeling.   In spite of this, Le Frère du guerrier is such an unusual film, with such powerful visual messages, that it is, for all its faults, compelling and strangely rewarding.  It is certainly a very welcome departure from more familiar cinematic territory.

© James Travers 2006

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