Berlin review: Giacomo Abbruzzese’s “Disco Boy”

What do a Belarusian emigrant and an African freedom fighter have in common? This is a question that Giacomo Abbruzzese’s feature film debut, which celebrated its world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, answers in a seductively magical-realistic and wandering way: sort of Right, although it takes a lot of trust from the viewer to pull it off. To illustrate its strangeness, disco boy can be roughly described as a mash-up of Beau Travail And Uncle Boonmee who can remember his past lives, two very different films. Although both are firmly rooted in art house history, neither resembles the other, and it’s that contrast—the rich potential opened up by the space between them—that’s at play here.

The opening, which serves as a sort of atmospheric overture, presents a vision of sleeping black men in a primitive natural setting. With a vision of drunken white men in a primitive urban setting, a busload of violent Belarusians are on a bus trip to Poland for a soccer match. Their status as unwelcome guests becomes clear when immigration officials check their passports and sternly remind them of the expiration date of their tourist visas. Two passengers, Aleksei (Franz Rogowski) and Mikhail (Michal Balicki), are nevertheless unimpressed and escape at the first opportunity.

The two friends see themselves as pioneers (“If you’re scared, stay home,” they say), and their real destination is France, where they want to settle and rebuild their lives. That dream is soon shattered when Mikhail drowns while crossing a river and Aleksei arrives in Paris alone and without his wingman. With no income and, most importantly, no papers, he joins the notoriously troublesome Foreign Legion, an institution that approves of his illegal status when he’s well off. And after passing strict entrance requirements—part endurance test, part student harassment—he is drafted and sent on a mission to Africa.

Parallel to this runs the story of Jomo (Morr Ndiaye), who leads the eco-positive rebel group MEND, which works for the liberation of the Niger Delta and is “enemy number one of the Nigerian government”. As Aleksei jumps through hoops for his punishing commander, Jomo is seen engaging in ecstatic shamanic dances with his sister Udoka (Laëtitia Ky). intertwined They finally do in an extraordinary sequence filmed with thermal imaging cameras that engages both men in a life-and-death struggle from which Aleksei emerges victorious but traumatized. These mental scars are reinforced when he returns to Paris and, when he visits a nightclub, sees (or imagines) that Udoka is also there.

Sounds strange and it is Is strange since Aleksei and Udoka have never met, but there is an instinctive connection between the two that introduces a seductive undertone of mysticism and, for reasons far too long to go into here, the film’s seemingly inappropriate title support.

It’s a bold change of tone that, when you think about it, doesn’t really work other than bringing a new angle to the subject of military combat and PTSD, but Abruzzese’s dynamic visual style is extreme compelling at the moment (winner of the Cannes Jury Prize 2021 by Navid Lapid Ahed’s knees operated at a similar level). The fact that Rogowski is very present in Berlin this year with his charismatic appearance in the Panorama title also contributes to this parts— has what it takes to pull it off: the camera clearly likes its strikingly angular features (has the phrase “unconventionally beautiful” been scrapped yet?), but it has a sense of sensation that really gets under your skin.

Some write it all off as pretentious, and probably will, but even if they do, it’s exactly the kind of pretentiousness cinema thrives on: a trippy stretch of the imagination that creates indelible images and strange new connections. in the brain. That’s pretty good for a first film. The exciting question is now: what will the Abruzzese do next?