Un Frère [A Brother] *** (2018, Simon Royer, Marin Lafitte, Oriane Barbaza) – Classic Movie Review 12,418

Simon Royer stars in the 2018 French romantic drama film Un Frère [A Brother] as 15-year-old Tom, who is spending August with his family at their summer home. One morning Tom finds a boy sleeping on the floor by him, 17-year-old Félix (Marin Lafitte).

Simon Royer stars in the 2018 French romantic drama film Un Frère [A Brother] as 15-year-old Tom, who is going to spend an August vacation month with his parents and younger sister Bertille (Oriane Barbaza) at their summer home in Normandy.

The kids have bunk beds, Tom on top and Bertille below, but one morning they wake up and there’s a boy sleeping beside them on the floor. He is 17-year-old Félix’s (Marin Lafitte), who has come to spend some time with them with his mother Iris (Iris Gastellu), who has just had a miscarriage. Tom’s mum tells him he has to be kind to them, and reveals that she has previously had a miscarriage too. So both Tom and Félix could have had a brother. Now they are both going to find one in each other as they spend some valuable quality time together, both on the beach and in bed.

The brasher, more outwardly going Félix makes the first moves on the shyer, more introverted and introspective Tom, but very soon Tom is hooked, and wildly jealous when Félix temporarily hooks up with one of the local girls. One night Bertille wakes up to find the boys in bed together and kissing. But Félix takes the trouble to befriend Bertille sweetly and cannily, and she keeps their secret.

Un Frère [A Brother] is bitter sweet, maybe, but mostly just sweet. It tiptoes gently and expertly in the minefield of young love. Simon Royer expresses Tom’s vulnerability and longing beautifully, Marin Lafitte captures Félix’s wayward, carefree, slightly capricious nature winningly, and Oriane Barbaza is winsome as the bratty Bertille.

The adults are all deliberately sidelined to cyphers, so we mostly just see them in the background and hear their voices. It’s a good device, working nicely here. The parents are just a distant irritant to the kids, who have to be worked round, and the kids are not much more than a tiresome irritant to the parents, who don’t seem to be doing much of a job bringing them up. Actually the kids are bringing themselves up, and making a pretty good job of it.

There’s an odd little sub-plot of a local skinhead boy who finds Bertille’s lost toy car on the beach, and threatens the two of them when Tom challenges him for it, but drops three 20 Euro notes in the scuffle. There is much arguing between Tom and Bertille about what’s to happen to the 60 Euro, and Bertille is furious when Tom splits it three ways to include Félix. The threatening boy reappears in the movie and it all gets sinister. But then nothing. Just an apology. Strange.

The trio spend ages on the beach making a sandcastle, that gets washed away by the incoming tide, and even more ages solving a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. It is a picture of the woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, created in late 1831. It looks tricky to do, and takes the boys into the wee small hours. When the boys have finally finished it, Bertille has kept the last piece hidden to be able to place it to complete the puzzle. You look for significance, and there may be some. It’s a puzzle.

The film ends with sadness and sudden drama. Of course, vacation romances rarely work after the vacation. Everybody has to go home and resume their usual lives. But Tom will remember this vacation all his life. Its memory will haunt him for ever.

Written and directed by Martin Escoffier and Victor Habchy, Un Frère [A Brother] is a loving, hauntingly beautiful film, capturing the moment and the place, exploring the boy meets boy and coming of age themes expertly, freshly and entertainingly.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,418

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