Les Liens du sang (2008)
Directed by Jacques Maillot

Film Review

In recent years, the old-fashioned gangster film has been experiencing something of a new lease of life in French cinema, satisfying both a modern day craving for visceral escapism and a burgeoning wave of nostalgia for the good old days of the classic polar.  In the wake of Alain Corneau's over-arty remake of the classic Le Deuxième souffle, 2008 saw the release of two full-bodied gangster films set in the 1970s - Jean-François Richet's blockbuster diptych Mesrine and Les Liens du sang, a far more modest production from Jacques Maillot.  Both of these latter films are intense, imaginative reworkings of a much-loved genre, and both are based on real-life events.  As impressive as the Mesrine films are, it is Maillot's more understated work which has the edge when it comes to presenting us with believable characters and a realistic portrayal of the 1970s.  The film even looks as if it were made in that decade, so perfectly does it evoke the era of implausibly long hair and truly hideous home decor. 

Les Liens du sang is Jacques Maillot's second and most inspired feature to date.  Having scored a notable success with his debut film, Nos vies heureuses (1999), he spent most of the next eight years developing a screen adaptation of the autobiographical book by the Papet brothers.  Originally, Maillot had intended to make a television series of six or seven 90-minute episodes but, having failed to sell the concept to French television, he was driven to make it into a feature film.  The film's long gestation period allowed Maillot to develop a rigorous screenplay of exceptional quality, offering a well-constructed narrative in which every character is convincingly drawn, avoiding the kind of overt clichés and plot contrivance to which the policier genre is particularly prone.  In both the slickly realised action sequences and the more intimate character scenes, Maillot directs his film with flair and intelligence.  With its gruesomely authentic period detail and yellow tinted photography, the film instantly calls to mind the drab washed-up feel of the late '70s, and one or two sequences would not be out of place in an episode of Starsky and Hutch. 

François Cluzet and Guillaume Canet are superb as the leads Gabriel and François, two brothers who chose to make careers on opposite sides of the law (and thereby proved that they are two of a kind).   It is the intense performances from these actors on which the film hinges, since Les Liens du sang is as much a character study as it is a homage to the classic French polar.  Cluzet and Canet complement one another perfectly, the former brooding and mercurial, the latter good-natured and vulnerable.  Outwardly their two characters are complete opposites, but the more we get to know them the more we realises that they are cut from the same cloth, loners who are bent on proving themselves in a tough world.    What the two characters share is an inability to escape from the groove into which they have slipped.  In true film noir fashion, both Gabriel and François are doomed to play out the roles that have been decided for them.  There is no hope of redemption for either of them, no second throw of the dice.

With its compelling performances, well-crafted story and stylish but unpretentious mise-en-scène, Les Liens du sang is easily one of the best French crime dramas in recent years.  Both Cluzet and Canet transcend the familiar noir stereotypes and imbue their respective characters with depth and humanity, making the shock ending all the more poignant.   The film works both as a homage to the gangster films and police procedurals that virtually monopolised TV and cinema screens in the 1970s and an insightful excursion into the darker passages of the human psyche.  Whether its impending American remake (from director James Gray) will prove to be anywhere near as effective remains to be seen.  This will be a hard act to follow.

Film Synopsis

Lyons, in the late 1970s.  François is a dedicated police inspector.  His brother Gabriel is a crook who has just finished serving a prison sentence for murder.  Their reunion is not easy but both men want to draw a line under the past.  With François's help, Gabriel finds a place to live and a job in a hypermarket.  Everything seems to be going well, until the day when Gabriel's criminal past catches up with him...