The western Sisters Brothers, cast in Romania with Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly, opened the American Independent Film Festival in Bucharest in the presence of French director Jacques Audiard (Palme d’Or for Dheepan in 2015, The Golden Bear in 2005 for Battre mon coeur s’est arrêté).
Jacques Audiard outlines, on the background of the Wild West, the same European cultural theme of nuance, character evolution, and complex contemporary values.
Western film with dramedy elements, the film is a daring attempt for the French director Jacques Audiard, who does not go along with the traditional westerns but combines the dramatic style and complexity of the character that is his brand with comic notes, all against the backdrop of America’s 19th-century gold. The result is exciting to watch.
The Sisters Brothers, two western bandits, discover one more, the other less – the sensitive and moral side. Of course, riding and shooting. Not that the bandits could not have a moral side, but if this genre of dilemma goes to a young European, New Yorker or an immigrant on the streets of Europe, Western fans are a digression that surprises when it comes to the saloon- community.
Due to the novel by Patrick deWitt, which he screened, there are no cultural and political notes in the film: the intriguing character of the intrigue is a scientist with the ideas of an ideal and utopian society.
The theme of the moral salvation of a character who discovers his consciousness is also visible here, as in most of the films of the filmmaker Jacques Audiard. The characters have an interesting depth and often this is the source of the comic. And the end is a happy one, but it’s not a happy-end Hollywood, but a wise happy-end of the European film: Audiard does not kill their characters, they let them grow.
The scenery is high and would make it envious of a Clint Eastwood or John Ford, as well as the realism of shooting scenes, but the action of the film and dramatic structure have little in common with a Western.
The landscapes would breathe if they were more important, because – although in the mountains and in Oregon’s suits – the action could fit into a stage scene.
The gross plan is almost nonexistent except for the scene from the beginning and the perspective of the parental home, Audiard being interested in the dialogues between the two Sisters and their psychology.
photo source: theguardian.com
See the trailer below:
