Rascal

«Rascal» could not be a more euphemistic title, considering what the film narrates. Before the eyes of a person passing by, the mysterious, seductive, and repellent Djé (Deladonchamps) is just an ex-convict, a smiling homeless man with a package of surprises, with mental resources that an interlocutor would not expect from him. But it is not my intention to reveal what Djé is really up to, because I would ruin the film for you.

At the end, I was surprised that the film is little mentioned on the internet, and that it has few awards. Apart from the fact that its release, scheduled as part of the official selection of the Cannes film festival in May 2020, was affected by the pandemic, I think that this indifference responds above all to the aesthetic treatment that director Peter Dourountzis gave to his first feature, based on his own script, which evades all dramaturgical resources with a whiff of psychology, in the style of a 19th century novel. He opted for a model that is closer to direct cinema, to anthropological cinema. Djé is defined neither by the opinions of others nor by his own reflections on his life, but through his actions and words in the present.

Descriptively, the film adds up incidents in Djé's life, after he is released from prison. The man arrives in Limoges and encounters bricklayers, sexual conquests and a graffiti artist who takes him to live with a community of misfits. Neither Djé nor anyone talk about the future or prospects. Events just happen and we do not know where the action is taking us, although director Dourountzis leaves us clues so that we can deduce the outcome. At the conclusion, there is nothing to explain, everything has been said.

In the center, the actor Pierre Deladonchamps dominates the film. There is no scene in which he is not involved. Deladonchamps has a way to project an unpleasant personality, with an almost gloomy expression, although it is sometimes illuminated by his smile. If in «Stranger by the Lake» he was a homosexual addicted to impersonal and fleeting sex, here he is a rabidly heterosexual guy, restrained, with the look of a snake.

A good film, with a different aesthetic and a dramaturgy free of emotional manipulations.