An extremely well-made French prison drama by co-writer/director Jacques Audiard. Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit also got writing credits. Lead Tahar Rahim as a new inmate is mesmerising, the camera often holding his bruised, scarred and often bleeding face in tight for agonisingly long periods. The plot is straightforward: a Corsican gang led by Niels Arestrup rules the gaol but is eclipsed by a Muslim collective as our man rises. Some scenes are very amusing amongst the heavy stuff. Somehow both very graphic and not especially violent. The surrealism is served up cold alongside everything else; there is no hand holding here.
The cinematography by Stéphane Fontaine (Captain Fantastic (2016)) is excellent. The connection between Rahim and Adel Bencherif (who teaches him to read) is superbly drawn. Rahim's performance won him Césars for Best Actor (Meilleur acteur) and Most Promising Actor (Meilleur espoir masculin) and the cast is uniformly great. It won Audiard the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes.
Roger Ebert: four stars. A Critic's Pick by Manohla Dargis. All those little details make the movie. Peter Bradshaw: five stars. Powerful, intentional.
