Les Diables (2002) - film review

Since they were found abandoned in the street as small children, Joseph and Chloé have spent most of their lives in care homes or with foster parents.  Joseph is fiercely protective of his autistic sister and intends to take her back to their home and their real parents.  On the threshold of adolescence, the two children go on the run once more, heading for Marseilles, but again they are captured.  They end up in a home for disturbed children.  Here, Chloé appears to respond positively to psychiatric treatment, but things turn bad when the children’s mother suddenly appears, intending to take Joseph away.  Unable to face being separated from his sister, Joseph goes on the run once more with Chloé…

Les Diables was Christophe Ruggia’s second full-length film after his well-received 1997 work, Le Gone du chaâba, and is informed by his own personal experiences as a child.  It is a film which conveys the vulnerability of children in a harsh adult world, but also their talent for self-preservation.  In some ways, it is a very honest film, and this comes mainly through the performances of the two child lead actors.  In other ways, however, the film feels overly contrived, overly dramatic, and this undermines its impact greatly.

Up until about the mid point of the film, Les Diables would stand as quite an impressive piece of social realist cinema.  The inadequacies of the social security system in France, the mindless brutality of the police, the fragmented nature of French society are all driven home as the film shows us an uncaring, unjust world from the point of view of two very disturbed youngsters.  Then it all goes wrong.   Joseph begins to talk and act like an adult and the film becomes increasingly violent, without any real justification.  What began as an original and moving drama quickly morphs into a trashy teen thriller, with one unlikely, cliché-heavy plot development followed by another.

Not only does the plot become tiresome, but so does the acting.  The adults are two-dimensional and add nothing to the drama; the adolescent characters are unconvincing stereotypes.  It also becomes clear that Vincent Rottiers has a very limited dramatic range.  Whilst he does outrage and wide-eyed surprise well, this is virtually all he can do, and he’s forced to do it again and again, with increasing monotony.  There’s an implied tenderness in his scenes with Adele Haenel, but there’s no sincerity, no depth.  If there’s one actor who transcends the increasingly false and derivative narrative, it is Adele Haenel; her portrayal of an autistic girl is not just convincing, it is almost heart-breaking.

Les Diables is bold and shocking, but for all the wrong reasons.  Whatever poetry and realism the film has is subverted and ultimately obliterated by an increasingly implausible plot and some ill-judged, mechanical characterisation.   A more restrained, introspective treatment of its subject would have made it a far better film.  Thriller-style violence and excessive child histrionics, such as we find in the second half of Les Diables, depletes the film’s charm and sense of truth.

© James Travers 2005

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