Film Review
Éric Barbier's filmmaking career ended almost before it had begun,
with the colossal box office failure of his debut feature
Le Brasier, an insanely extravagant
social drama centred on a mining community. Undeterred by this humiliating
flop, Barbier had a second stab at making his mark with
Toreros,
a noir-tinted realist drama, only to land himself
with another critical and commercial failure. After this second let
down, Barbier gave up filmmaking for a time and directed his creative energies
towards advertising, before returning to cinema in 2007 with
Le Serpent, a thriller with more
popular appeal.
Toreros has a great deal going for it, not least an extraordinary
cast that includes some of the most talented performers of the time - Olivier
Martinez, Claude Brasseur, Olivier Gourmet and Sergi López.
Martinez is particularly well cast as the indomitable lead character and
the authenticity of his portrayal of a latter-day Sisyphus struggling against the odds gives the film
some incredibly powerful moments. The problem lies not on the acting
or writing fronts, but with Barbier's over-grandiose vision, which makes
the film look like a grim hangover from the Cinéma du Look style that
briefly infected French cinema in the early 1980s, with its crass over-emphasis
on visuals and failure to offer anything more than the most superficial representation
of its protagonists.
Toreros is a richly atmospheric piece with a distinctive baroque
feel to it (evocative of André Téchiné's early films,
such as
Barocco), but the glaring
self-consciousness of its mise-en-scène prevents it from having anything
like the impact it deserves, given the quality of the acting and writing.
The film oddly prefigures the dark post-noir French thrillers of the following
decade (culminating in Jacques Audiard's magnificent
Un prophète (2009)), and
it is tragic that the one thing preventing Barbier from being an instigating
force in this dynamic new aesthetic is his frustrating tendency for over-statement.
© James Travers 2019
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Next Eric Barbier film:
Le Serpent (2007)
Film Synopsis
For a time Manuel was one of Spain's leading toreadors, but his glittering
career was tragically cut short when he sustained a serious injury in the
course of one of his vastly attended bull fights. Unable to find work,
he drifted into a life of crime and was soon mixed up in drugs trafficking.
The authorities inevitably caught up with him and he spent two years in
prison. On his release, Manuel is determined to turn over a new leaf
with the help of his family. Alas, fortune is not on his side and
his troubles return as he sets out to clear his father's crippling debts.
Manuel has only one course left open to him - he must resume his former
career and return to the bullring...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.