Les Mauvais joueurs (2005) - film review

The tough life of Armenian immigrant Vahé Krikorian is about to change – for the worse.  His father’s shop in a poor area of Paris is massively in debt and has to close, whilst his Chinese girlfriend Lu Ann has left him for another man.   He makes friends with Lu Ann’s brother, Yuen, who stubbornly refuses to work for the gangsters who smuggled him into France.  Vahé tries to persuade Yuen to cooperate, but the latter has no intention of submitting and is foolish enough to think he can resolve the matter himself…

Les Mauvais joueurs is a first full-length film from French director Frédéric Balekdjian, a Scorsese-inspired crime-drama set in Paris’ notorious immigrant quarter, Le Sentier.  The film’s stylistic strengths – notably its raw depiction of the vulnerability of illegal immigrants – are undermined by the hackneyed narrative in which virtually no cliché is omitted.   There are some credible performances (Pascal Elbé and Simon Abkarian are both excellent), but the threadbare script offers little in the way of plausible characterisation, plot and character motive.  After a satisfactory, albeit pretty aimless, first half, the film closes as a rather disappointing variant of a gangster film, sacrificing depth and realism for the tired convenience of an unimaginative genre concept.

© James Travers 2007

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