Deux frères (2004)
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud

Film Review

Sixteen years after he made L'Ours (1988), a powerful and incredibly popular natural history drama about a grizzly bear and a stray bear cub, Oscar winning director Jean-Jacques Annaud ventures over 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 breathtaking cinematography filling the screen with the splendour of the natural world whilst strongly evoking the era in which the film is set.

For children, Deux frères undoubtedly makes a mesmerising fable, but for a more critical adult audience its laboured sentimentality and lack of narrative substance count against it somewhat.  In places, the plot is contrived to the point of absurdity and little effort seems to have been spared to make any of the human protagonists in the drama remotely convincing.  By dividing our attention between the tiger cubs and the far less interesting humans, the film lacks coherence and you wonder how much more effective it might have been if the focus had stayed on the tiger cubs for the duration of the story, so that everything we see is presented from their point of view.  In spite of such shortcomings, Deux frères is still an attractive film that is moving and, at times, hilariously funny, although it will perhaps appeal most to youngsters in need of something slightly more wholesome than the latest Disney offering.  If we can accept the film for what it is, a simplistic fable encouraging us all to show greater respect for the natural world, it really does touch the heart.

Film Synopsis

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?