When we first meet neo-Nazi Marco (Alban Lenoir), his rage against his enemies — “Arabs, fags, commies” — seems to be the only thing keeping him alive. Struggling to catch his next breath as he beats up innocent strangers with his skinhead buddies, the teen looks like he just might explode from hatred if he didn’t express it regularly with his fists, boots, or the butcher’s knife he carries around in his back pocket.
In the last French presidential election, the nativist and neo-fascistic National Front — long the party of choice for white supremacists and Holocaust deniers — came in third with voters. Spanning the last thirty years — during which National Front leaders Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine Le Pen became ugly fixtures in Gallic politics — French Blood chronicles Marco’s decades-long attempts to distance himself from his racist, violent past — if only it’d let him go.
Writer-director Diastème’s* historically based drama isn’t so much political rhetoric as a fascinating sociology of anger. As might be expected, Marco suffers from too little education and too much family dysfunction. But the film eschews easy psychologizing — it really doesn’t matter why he believes what he believes — to explore instead how unexamined fury corrodes not only the soul, but one’s opportunities for success and self-actualization. As the script acknowledges, there are ways to make wrath and fearmongering work for you — just ask Donald Trump — but picking on everyone who isn’t like you and getting into constant turf wars with other thugs is much more likely to land you in the hospital, or worse.
![](https://www.mandatory.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/mandatoryt_image_place_holder_r01.jpg?w=1024)
At the festival screening I attended, Diastème explained in a post-movie Q&A that he wanted to see how a young-ish man who had renounced the vile beliefs of his youth might (or might not) save himself. French Blood’s fatal flaw is that it’s never quite clear whether Marco really has turned his back on his neo-Nazism, or simply decided to walk away from the daily aggressions that are part and parcel of his adolescent politics. It’s an unproductive ambiguity that muddles the story the film is trying to tell. I’m going to give Diastème the benefit of the doubt here and discuss the film as if it actually had made Marco’s gradual enlightenment explicit, as Diastème had intended.
There’s little place in civilized society for a run-of-the-mill brute, which is why Marco flits from job to job, offering his muscles as a bouncer, a bodyguard, and, in the most intellectually demanding of his jobs, a bartender. He’s smart and charming enough to seduce and marry the gorgeous niece (Lucie Debay) of a wealthy political donor, but his police record and lack of higher education force him to mingle and work alongside the very immigrants he despises most. Smartly, Marco never has an aha! moment that turns him into a convert for liberté, égalité, et fraternité. Other than a post-beatdown panic attack, it’s really the kindly mentorship of a paternal pharmacist (Patrick Pineau) and aging out of his testosterone-overdose years that make him realize that he needs something more than racism and violence to give his life meaning.
![](https://www.mandatory.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/mandatoryt_image_place_holder_r01.jpg?w=1024)
If Marco has paid economically for the grave follies of his youth, the costs of drifting from his ultranationalist pals and spouse are even steeper. From the outside, he may look like a failure, but his journey toward serenity, filled with sacrifices, is a compellingly admirable one. At no point does any plot development feel forced to make a political point, but the film is wholly convincing in its argument that rage as a lifestyle is a dead end in which the barriers are erected before you can even see where your life could have gone. French Blood is that rarest of tragedies: one full of hope.
* Like Madonna, he goes by a mononym.
Images via Mars Distribution
The Best of TIFF 2015 | Exclusive Reviews, Interviews and Videos
The Best of TIFF 2015: Exclusive Reviews, Interviews and Videos
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'The Martian' Sciences All The Science
Matt Damon stars in an outer space thriller by nerds, for nerds. The rest of us can enjoy it too.
Image via 20th Century Fox
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Brian Helgeland on ‘Legend’ and ‘The Wild Bunch’
The Oscar-winning filmmaker reveals which Tom Hardy was hardest to work within a film that stars two of them.
Image via Universal Pictures
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'High-Rise' is an Impressive Erection
An insulated community gradually collapses into anarchy and horror in Ben Wheatley’s slimy J.G. Ballard adaptation.
Image via Recorded Picture Company
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Denis Villeneuve on 'Sicario' and 'Blade Runner 2'
The filmmaker promises to 'take care of' the mystery of whether Deckard is a replicant or a human in his next film, the long-awaited follow-up to Blade Runner.
Image via CraveOnline
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'The Boy and the Beast' is Best of the Fest
Mamoru Hosoda’s unique and brilliant animated fantasy could very well fill a hole in your soul.
Image via Mongrel Media
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Chiwetel Ejiofor on ‘The Martian’
He can about playing a super nerd, but he cannot talk about playing a supervillain (yet).
Image via CraveOnline
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Tom Hardy is Kray-Kray in 'Legend'
Tom Hardy plays identical twin organized crime bosses, but only one of them well, in Brian Helgeland’s uneven biopic.
Image via Universal Pictures
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'The Danish Girl' Flakes at the End
Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander give soaring performances, but this Oscar contender lands with an unexpected thud.
Image via Focus Features
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'Mustang' Isn't Just Turkey's 'Virgin Suicides'
A promising new filmmaker explores the repressions five sisters undergo when they’re accused of sexual indecency.
Images via Cohen Media Group
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Drew Goddard on 'The Martian' and 'Sinister Six'
"It was the epic Spider-Man movie of my dreams," says the acclaimed writer/director.
Image via CraveOnline
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'Body' Makes You Laugh Without Knowing Why
Corporeality haunts three characters in this masterful Silver Bear winner from director Małgorzata Szumowska.
Image via Nowhere
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'Green Room' Has Strong Fear on Tap
Jeremy Saulnier's neo-Nazi thriller is a worthy follow-up to Blue Ruin.
Image via A24
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Superb Satire in 'Chevalier'
The Greek New Wave demands to be viewed with this comedy about hyper-competitiveness turning men into horse's asses.
Image via Faliro House Productions
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'Sicario' Borders on Greatness
From the director of Prisoners comes a gripping episode of narcs and violations.
Image via Lionsgate