The second film of the author of Polars and director Jérémie Guez strives to two cousins whose relationship is upset, in the heart of Philadelphia, where the mafia has the reputation of being the most cruel of the United States.
by
There is Greek tragedy in the second film of the Jeremie Guez Polars writer. There are James Gray, Cornelian filmmaker of fatality and family relationships marked with the seal of debt and loomed oaths. And then there is a lot of pellet on the part of a young director to stick to this story of cousins we take for brothers, in the kind of Abel and Cain.
The scenario is adapted from a fraternal love (points, 2021), from the American novelist Pete Dexter, in which the director felt that he could slip his universe and his obsessions, filming Philadelphia, his districts without charm of the periphery, its violence, between a boxing room and a cafe, its semi-deserted streets with great intimacy, as if they were the Sables-d’Olonne, where Jeremia Guez was born thirty-three years ago .
The director, whose fifth book, the Ames under the neon (the Tengo Editions, 2021), confirms his taste for a stylistic dryness near the purple and all shades of black. By installing his new feature film in Philadelphia, whose mafia is considered the most cruel of the United States, he leaves his heroes slip on the rails of a destiny they do not master. Until worst.
Authenticity
As in all tragedies, the story is both simple and complicated. Simple because the human feelings that underlie it – honor, loyalty, loyalty – are immediately understandable. Complicated because a trail of betrayals blurred the benchmarks, erased the contours that the bonds of the blood had drawn between good and evil.
Peter (Matthias Schoenaerts) and Michael (Joel Kinnaman) are two cousins, raised together after the brutal death of Peter’s father and the internment of his mother. Family Tradition: They belong to the Irish underworld, which holds several quarters of the city and faces the rising power of Italian malavita. As much Peter is taisous and careful at the point of appearing loose, as much Michael is bravache, talkative, blood, eruptive, anxious to multiply the external signs of his power to better delimit his territory.
Filmed in a quasi-dimmer and winter landscapes, Sons of Philadelphia surprises with its authenticity. The film is neither a fake nor a style exercise, nor a pastiche of some American poles. Past the first reflex (“but we have already seen that somewhere!”), We let ourselves win by the relentless narration. The two main actors bring their density to this story that does not lack. Jérémie Guez, who would see himself well in Lisbon or Tokyo as long as he finds a good story, led his American dream up his dream.