‘The Quiet Son’ Review: Vincent Lindon Stars in a Stolid Parenting Drama With a Social-Issues Slant
variety.comJessica Kiang If you’re one of those people whose first instinct in cases of youth violence is to blame the parents, “The Quiet Son,” the new Venice-competing title from directors Delphine and Muriel Coulin (“17 Girls”) has a valuable perspective, telling the believably downbeat story of a 22-year-old French guy who becomes embroiled in right-wing street politics, exclusively from the point of view of his loving but uncomprehending father.
If, however, you’re already of the opinion that the issue is more complex than simple parental negligence, the solidly straightforward film has less to offer, as it states and restates the problem of rising, increasingly aggressive alt-right sympathies among young, working class populations, without providing any novel or particularly useful insights into it.
Adapted by the Coulin sisters from the book “Ce qu’il faut de nuit” by Laurent Petitmangin, the film’s main attraction beyond its torn-from-the-headlines topicality, is Vincent Lindon (so often cast as a blue-collar worker he could confidently launch his own line of high-vis jackets and durable workwear), once again making the most of a gruffly sympthetic everyman role.
Playing railway repairman Pierre, a father who has raised two sons singlehandedly following the death of their mother when they were boys, Lindon presents an entirely convincing portrait of Pierre’s arid anguish at gradually losing one of them to an ideology that, as a Frenchman of an age to have grown up in the wake of May ’68, he cannot himself understand.
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