With so many movies coming out each week and premiering at festivals across the year, it’s inevitable that some will be forgotten. Especially on the foreign film scene, it can be difficult for those movies to grab the attention necessary not just to land U.S. distribution, but to make any kind of stateside wave. But Kino Lorber are hoping they can find a crowd for “The Son Of Joseph,” a film we called “genuine, generous and joyful” when we saw it in Berlin back in February.
Produced by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, directed by Eugène Green, and starring Victor Ezenfis, Natacha Regnier, Fabrizio Rongione, and Mathieu Amalric, the story revolves around a teenager eager to discover the true identity of his father, but that’s really just the starting point. Here’s the official synopsis:
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Eugène Green drops biblical motifs — Abraham and Isaac, Mary and Joseph — into this genuinely contemporary setting as if it were the most natural thing in the world, augmenting them with nods to crime films, Italian Baroque music, a Doisneau photograph, three 17th century paintings and an artificial way of speaking that is anything but current. The characters are positioned within the visual compositions and look directly into the camera, their diction flawless. Whatever needs saying — and that’s a lot — they recite impassively, in declamatory fashion. Along the way, there are jabs at the literature milieu and trendy yuppies. A film where divine seriousness rubs against bizarre comedy, where theology meets caricature, an intriguing film, anachronistic and innovative in equal measure.
“The Son Of Joseph” starts rolling out in limited release on January 13, 2017.
