CINEUROPA – Review IN THE NAME OF BLOOD
Review: In the Name of Blood
By Fabien Lemercier / Cineuropa
« Nice is a village: everyone knows everyone else. » Beneath the surface of the blue sky, the beach parties, the iconic Promenade des Anglais and the luxurious villas of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, it’s the deep obscurity and acute underground violence of the southern city that’s explored in IN THE NAME OF BLOOD, the debut feature film by Akaki Popkhadze (a Georgian director living in France) which electrified the 72nd San Sebastián Film Festival’s New Directors competition. Because, behind the sequins, a world of cosmopolitan criminality is pulsating, a universe where, even more openly than elsewhere, God and the Devil face off in a ferocious war over smuggling turfs. It’s a classic film noir setting which the director uses to tell a family-based story about two brothers who are almost polar opposites.
« Give me a name. » It all begins with the daylight abduction of a lawyer who subsequently finds himself naked in a deserted building yard outside of the city, and being threatened with a blowtorch, before ending up a corpse in a dump truck full of soil. The name in question was evidently given, and it turns out to be that of a Russian oligarch who recently obtained a seaside concession in the area. Young Tristan’s (Florent Hill) father, the oligarch’s driver, is mistaken for his boss and he ends up paying the price: he’s killed in a beautiful town square in Nice. It’s a staggeringly brutal opening for a film set in the heart of seminary-bound Tristan’s very modest Georgian family, who are devastated by this bereavement and who see the older brother of the family, Gabriel (Nicolas Duvauchelle) – exfiltrated from the country ten years previously (after getting caught up in a drugs case, leading to him being rebuked by the Georgian community in Nice) – remerging in search of vengeance and linking back up with the wrong crowd…
Divided into four parts (« Au nom du père », « Vaincre le mal », « Tu ne tueras point », « Console ma peine »), In the Name of Blood advances at speed, balancing on the edge of the abyss and buoyed by a powerful screenplay (penned by the director in league with Florent Hill) and excellent editing by Mathieu Toutlemonde. Infused with the influence of James Gray (Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own the Night) and Coppola (The Godfather), the film brings together Georgians, gypsies, Bulgarians, Russians and Chechens in the context of sunny Nice and amidst Orthodox icons, cocaine, money – which is king to those dreaming of social advancement, a judo hall, tumultuous sculleries, lethal tunnels, mean streets, unstable characters, savage score settling, etc. It’s a high-tension script (based around the story of two brothers who love one another deep down but who don’t enjoy each other’s trust…), which is very well served by all its actors (primarily including a raging Finnegan Oldfield, alongside Denis Lavant, Sandor Funtek and Ia Shugliashvili) in a parade of highly credible « uglies ». It’s a film which respects genre film codes without revolutionising them, using them to its advantage in high-adrenaline fashion.
In the Name of Blood was produced by Adastra Films (France) in co-production with Beside Productions (Belgium) and Elly Films (Austria). Urban Sales are steering international sales.
