Directors Muriel and Delphine Coulin have released a third feature film which questions the excesses of young people caught up in the far-right.
Adapted from the novel What you need at night by Laurent Petitmangin (The book factory), Femina prize for high school students in 2020, Play with fire by Delphine and Muriel Coulin tells the story of a father destitute by the inexorable drift of his youngest son towards the extreme right. Carried by an excellent trio of actors, the film is released in theaters on January 22.
In the east of France, Pierre (Vincent Lindon), a fifty-year-old railway worker, maintains fraternal relations with his colleagues but no longer wants to get involved in the union battles he has waged throughout his career. His priority now is his family. A widower, he raises Fus (Benjamin Voisin) and Louis (Stefan Crepon), his two grown sons, alone. Louis, a serious student, dreams of studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. Fus, without prospects, begins to associate with extremist groups. Pierre and Louis, helpless, watch Fus drift.
Pierre is disconcerted by this son who mixes with nazillons with values totally opposed to his own, humanist, left-wing, which he thought he had instilled in his children. Constraint, anger, understanding, although he tried everything to bring his son back to his senses, nothing worked, Fus persisted and signed until his loss.
How far can one go for filial love? Can we forgive the unforgivable to our children? How can we help them when they go down the wrong path? After telling the story of a group of young girls who decide to get pregnant together in 17 girlsin 2011, then that of two military women in See the country in 2016, the third film produced by four hands by Delphine and Muriel Coulin once again focuses on our society.
The two directors this time explore the question of family, education, transmission against a backdrop of crisis of values and radical right-wing of a part of French society, that of the margins, the downgraded, the cast aside. . That of a youth who takes refuge, in packs, in violence and hatred of others.
The two brothers, one promised a bright future, the other stuck in his failures, represent this social divide which crosses France. Even football no longer manages to reconcile opposing forces. And Pierre himself ends up giving up.
-The film is also marked by the almost total absence of women. Pierre lost his wife, his boys their mother. They grow up in an exclusively male environment. Same music in the far-right groups that Fus frequents. The only female figures present in the film embody the law, the rule, or even culture: a judge, a lawyer, the director of the Sorbonne. When they arrive, it is already too late for Fus. Does this mean that an earlier female presence could have saved Fus? We won't know, but this absence of women adds to the radicality of the narrative.
In an organic production, the camera remains as close as possible to the protagonists, their flesh, and their emotions. The characters' anger, love, joy, violence and pain are literally filmed on edge. Bathed in chiaroscuro which moves the image from shadow to light, from underexposure within to saturation of the exterior, underlines the impossibility for the father to protect his children from violence from outside.
Delphine and Muriel Coulin's film once again gives Vincent Lindon the opportunity to express all the power of his acting palette. A role which earned him the Volpi Cup for best actor at the Venice Film Festival in 2024. Opposite him Benjamin Voisin embodies with great force the young Fus adrift, which contrasts with the delicate hollow acting of Stefan Crepon in the role of the one Fus calls “the perfect son”.
By casting their dual feminine gaze on a man's world, the two directors create a film that is both intimate and political and touches on the major questions of the contemporary world.
Genre : Drama
Directors: Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin
Actors: Vincent Lindon, Benjamin Voisin, Stefan Crepon
Pays : France, Belgium
Duration : 1h 58min
Sortie : January 22, 2025
Distributer : To Life
Synopsis : Pierre raises his two sons alone. Louis, the youngest, succeeds in his studies and advances easily in life. Fus, the eldest, drifts away. Fascinated by violence and the balance of power, he became closer to far-right groups, the opposite of his father's values. Pierre witnesses helplessly the influence of these associations on his son. Little by little, love gives way to incomprehension…
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