In its opacity the English title "Three Dancing Slaves" fits the movie, though the French title, "Le Clan" (2004) signals what the movie is about. The one dancer in the movie is not one of the three brothers whose stories are told in three chapters in this 2004 movie directed by Gaël Morel from a script cowritten with Christophe Honoré (who wrote and directed the kinky "Ma Mère" about another kind of perverse family).

Because Gaël Morel first came to widespread attention as an actor playing the student (François Forestier) infatuated with the hunky Serge played by Stéphane Rideau in André Téchiné's 1994 international hit "Les rouseaux sauvages" (Wild Reeds), and because the movies Morel has directed that have been exported (La vie à rebourse, À toute vitesse[Full Speed], and this one) star Rideau, they are ritualistically cudgeled with "not as good as 'Wild Reeds." It is true that they are not, but, then, neither are Téchine's other movies (Les Voleurs, Alice et Martin are the subsequent ones that have had American theatrical releases). I think that we should stipulate that "Wild Reeds" is a particularly outstanding coming-of-age film and not expect that Morel the director is ever going to top it.

I found "Three Dancing Slaves" fairly frustrating while I was watching it. I also found Full Speed fairly frustrating while I was watching it, but in reviewing it, my estimation rose. I saw "Three Dancing Slaves" a month ago. Some of it has stuck with me as movies I have seen in the interim haven't. I find it less opaque in retrospect than I did while watching it, and think that much of my frustration is prompted by dismay at how f__ked-up one of the brothers is and that another lets himself be pulled down by it. That is, my frustration is from taking the characters as real (and wanting to pick two of them up and shake them!) rather than from any technical movie-making failures.

It starts with the middle brother Marc (the shaved-headed Nicholas Cazalé), who is the most sullen and self-destructive of the three. Marc is fetishistically shot (not least in the scene of bathing his dog, but also in a scene of trimming his pubic hair) and is a quite mystifying character. Why is he such a f__k-up? As in "Full Speed," there is a lack of back-story, and there is the general French aversion to psychological revelation and exploring motives. "Show, don't tell" is something Morel has taken to heart.

I totally fail to understand not only why but how Marc does his culminating (but not fatal) self-destructive act. And I don't understand why his youngest brother first idolizes him and then sacrifices his own happiness for Marc. (Similarly, I fail to see why the other three main characters in "Full Speed" love or like the narcissistic cad Quentin. IMO, Marc and Quentin deserve to be alone and cared for/about by no one!).

Marc's chapter is followed by one centered on the older brother Christophe," (Stéphane Rideau, who starred as an object of homoerotic desire in "Come Undone" as well as in "Wild Reeds"). Christophe has been in prison and goes to work in a pork-processing plant, where he impresses the manager by his hard work. He is determined to "go straight," and refuses to let Marc pull him back into a life of drug dealing and violence. (One of my complaints about "Full Speed" is that three of the four main characters had no visible means of support, so I should give Morel credit for better grounding the characters of "Three Dancing Slaves"—in showing family connections as well as in showing how at least three of the four main characters make a living.

The final, most lyrical part, shows the youngest brother, Olivier (Thomas Dumerchez), the one who misses his dead Algerian mother the most and has a torrid summer affair with one of Marc's friends, the France-born Arab Hicham (Salim Kechiouche). Hicham teaches Olivier hang-gliding, which is gorgeously shot. He also narrates the third chapter (which I was slow to grasp. Marc's self-destructiveness pulls Olivier away from Hicham, which very much disappoints the romantic in me. Like Hicham, I want Olivier to have more than a brief idyll with Hicham—though if Olivier doesn't want to keep him, I'd be happy to have him: Salim Kechiouche is my Alain Delon for the 21st century. Kechiouche had a small part in "Full Speed" and was the character in Grande école who knew what (whom) he wanted and went for it (him).

What Christophe and Olivier do is comprehensible (though sometimes deplorable), much of what Marc does isn't.

(And Rideau has moved on from being the fetishized/desired male to mature and careerist. Cazalé is not a worthy successor IMO. Cazalé seems to have become Morel's fascination already for the 2002 movie "Les Chemins de l'oued" [the western way; though the English-language title at the Toronto Film Festival was "Under Another Sky"], the first and only Morel feature without Rideau in its cast. In it Cazalé plays a France-born Arab who is sent to Algeria to live with his ailing grandfather. Algeria and or Algerians loom large in all Morel's feature-length films.)

There is nudity (male) and violence (male). Although one of the brothers is gay, I don't think it is a "gay film," though I can't imagine it appealing much to a non-gay audience. The similarly murky, elliptical movies of François Ozon do, but Ozon's focus almost entirely on women.

Since to some degree it has haunted me (must be "good to think" in some perverse way, to borrow a standard from Claude Lévi-Strauss), has gorgeous alpine locales lyrically photographed by Jean-Max Bernard, has Salim Kechiouche as the main romantic character, and because the actors go all out with somewhat underwritten parts, my vacillation between rating the movie 3 stars and 4 stars is pushed up

(The only DVD extra features are a misleading theatrical trailer and a photo gallery. The transfer is good and the subtitles are readable and grammatical.)

----

This is a(nother) contribution to Ifif1938's French find celebration/writeoff. Many of mine have been multi-character coming-of-age dramas. In that writing this one was partly stimulated by Tigger500's enthusiasm for Stéphane Rideau, I've decided to dedicate it to him (and encourage him to post more often here).


©2006, Stephen O. Murray




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age