Eastern Boys (Robin Campillo, 2013): France

Reviewed by Jacob Wirsenius, viewed at the Santa Barbara international film festival Metropolitan 4.

A film about a group of boys from different east-Europe countries such as Ukraine, Romania and Russia. They all live together in Paris in some sort of motel. They make a living from stealing and selling. This movie could be disturbing sometimes but overall a pretty good movie and it was interesting to watch because of the different style of filmmaking. The film was directed by Robin Campillo and is starring Olivier Rabourdin as Daniel, Kirill Emelyanov as Marek, Daniil Vorobyov  as the “boss” and Edéa Darcque as Chelsea. I saw the film in Santa Barbara at Metro 4 during the film festival.

The film starts in the streets of Paris where we can see all the character just walking around talking to each other. Finally Daniel (the older man) talks to one of the boys and they decide to meet at Daniels place to have sex for money. The other day it knocks on Daniels door, he opens and a very young boy stands there. He asks what the little boy is doing there and the little boy just walk in and sits down. I few minutes later one of the eastern boys comes and knocks on the door and then just walk in. Finally all of them are there and they start to put on high music, dance and drink. Meanwhile this is happening they start to steal everything in the apartment and Daniel never question it. This goes on for a while and Daniel gets really drunk and the next day he wakes up at the couch and see all the mess. He leaves a note to his cleaner and go to work as if nothing has happened. The next day Marek comes by the apartment and wants to keep his promise he made before they robbed him. Daniel accept this, they have sex and Daniel pays Marek. After this Marek keeps coming back because he needs the money and it comes to a point where they start liking each other. Marek is doing all this without the other guys knowing and it has to remain that way or else there will be problems.

I was impressed by acting from the three main character, really believable. The movie showed how hard it is to be an  immigrant and trying to make a living. One scene that i kept in my mind was the long scene when they robbed him. Loud music, barely no talking and just all of them dancing around for almost 20 minutes. The scene felt a little bit disturbing to me and the fact that Daniel didn’t to anything about it was weird but it also made it more interesting. I really felt that they pushed boundaries with the cinematography and how they presented things. This was the first French movie I saw during the film festival and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this.

After a few days thinking about this film I started to appreciate it more so I would recommend this film because it can be nice and also healthy to see something different once in a while. If you like french films you defiantly should see it. A powerful story with a really strong theme.