Les Géants (Bouli Lanners, 2011): Belgium

The film The Giants was not the best film I saw at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.  The film did have several nice long shots and interesting locations but to me it seemed boring.  I am not sure what the target audience is for this film, Les Geants had too much cursing and drugs to be targeted at the age the boys in the film are (15 year old and 13 year old).  I’m 20 felt the story went to slow with lacking of reason and story.  There were humorous moments and very real moments but overall the film was boring and not very interesting.

The Giants played at the Santa Barbara film festival.  The director, Bouli Lanners, did a really great job directing these young actors.  The acting seemed very natural and I was very impressed with there skills.  Zacharie Chasseriaud who played Zak, the youngest of the group, 13 & 3/4, had the best performance.  He was very believable in all of his face expressions and body language.  The character Angle was very easy to love to hate.  The supporting woman’s character was very funny and brought a good laugh every time she was on the screen.  Overall the acting was my favored element of the film.

The film The Giants takes place in a small town.  The story is about two young boys who are staying at there recently deceased grandfather.  The boys quickly run into another young boy who’s home life is just as bad as theirs, if not worse.  We begin to discover that the boys mother is not around and doesn’t want to be.  They act as young boys with no supervision do, smoking pot and drinking alcohol.  The boys desitions threw out the story only get them into more trouble while the audience wants to yell “NO THAT’S A BAD IDEA!”.    The story was not very interesting and the end left me asking myself “so… what happened to them?”.  I am not a big fan of those sort of films that leave the ending up to the  audience but hey that’s just me.

The most significant aspects of the film The Giants was the acting and the great use of long pan shots on beautiful landscapes.  The film was shot in Belgium witch has some amazing buildings and roads and fields and all sorts of very cool places.  The acting was the most entertaining aspect of the movie for me because I felt like I was in the room goofing around with these kids.  The acting skills of these boys really impressed me and kept me from falling asleep.

The film The Giants is definitely not the best film I’ve ever seen but if you like those very real coming to age films this may be one you would want to check out.  If your a young aspiring actor I would definitely recommend watching it just for the acting.  This was not my type of movie but I’m sure others can enjoy it.