Presented in the selection Un Certain Regard du Cannes Festival 2024, The Kingdom of the Julien Colonna is (still) visible in rooms. Doublet winner of Corsican films with In his image of which we had already spoken during the GIFF. It may well be that island cinema climbs at the top of the tops of the end of the year... Tréve de chattage : immediate boarding for Corsica of the 90s!
The weight of a father
Summer 1995, Lesia (the brilliant Ghjuvanna Benedetti) spends his first real summer of teens, accompanied by his family and his first love. However, before enjoying it fully, a man takes him on his motorcycle to a villa. She has the happiness to find her father (Saveriu Santucci), a wanted gang leader, accompanied by many of his followers. Lesia, although happy to find him, feels that there are serious threats to his father's life...
Cicada stridulation on black screen. Their noise, first synonymous with holidays, happiness, swelling, becomes metallic, strident, deafening. In The Kingdom, it will not be necessary to rely on the decorations of postcards or the excavating Corsican accent. Under the pine groves, behind the white walls of the villas, on the pebbles of the beaches, blood is everywhere. A blood that one finds crusted on the mouth of two dead wild boars, swung on the deck of a pick-up, in a first (big) plan that announces the color. A beast came out, tied by the hind legs: the body of the Suid was raised on the Mediterranean backdrop and sunbathed. A young woman – Lesia – extract from the crowd. He gets a knife. She grabs him. Blood's on his face. The viscera are flowing. A few applause, then a medium plan shows all these men ragaillarded by their hunt leaving the plan, leaving the young woman alone with her bloody hands.
This opening will be programmed in the whole feature film, where women manage in the shadow the consequences of male violence: whether it is a body to cry at the morgue, an "orphan" girl who needs to be taken care of, a meal to cook to make those men tired of their beast brutal, it is always the female sex that bears the mental burden of the blood stroke. And Lesia won't escape. If it spawns with this ultra-masculin medium, integrates the codes, feels a certain pride in being with these local mafia, it is finally for always better to take a hand crank back in the face.
Loop films
Lesia's looking for her father. And if the film grows a gripping tension, which will only swell bloodbathing in the bloodshed, it is first and foremost the story of a subsidiary relationship that unfolds on the screen. The story of a kingdom shared by a girl and her ghost father, enrolled in a fratricidal war for self-independence whose ins and outs are guessed more than they are clearly expressed to us. A decidedly sorry kingdom, kingdom of air currents, where the father disappeared more often than he resurfaced.
Yet it is this story, a story on the margins of what is being played by politics in the outbreak of violence portrayed in the background of the film, which gives the Kingdom His greatest scenes. Between this long exchange in a summer evening at the campsite, this hunting scene which tells so much about their relationship without however needing to formulate or this bathing scene in the river, triptych of punched scenes where however does not flow the least millilitre of hemoglobin. The power of Kingdom It's emotional, and the time bomb he's offering us starts from the very first exchanges between Lesia and his father. What to emphasize the incarnation of the actress Ghjuvanna Benedetti for his first (and we guess, not the last) role in his career. What also read in subtext is a much more personal story, which takes to the guts, when one knows that the director Julien Colonna No one is other than the son of "Jean-Jé" Colonna, the great name of Corsican banditry with a lot marked by the seal of violence as one can discover in this Article World.
Corsican films
Unable to evoke The Kingdom Not to mention aboutIn his image, so much the two Corsican feature films dialogue one with the other. Between a part of the casting they share, this common (and salutary) choice of non-professional actors, the fact of having as main protagonist a young woman and also, but above all, to anchor in the violence of the Corsican independence milieu. Both films explore this continuum of violence that feeds itself, but are also two loop films. Antonia as much as Lesia tries a run forward, try to escape from a fatum that will undoubtedly catch up with them.
To close this criticism, we should note the contribution of Jeanne Herry (director of I'll always see your faces. in particular) to the writing of Kingdom, which was a long film since it took more than three and a half years to finish. And when one sees the result, one can only rejoice. And as the end-of-year parties and the season of tops/flops are approaching, it is strong to bet when the viewing of the Kingdom that two Corsican films risk rising very high in the ranking of the best films of 2024...
Very nice critic of a sensitive film that I had discovered in Cannes. It creates a form of softness that contrasts with the rules of account at work against the background.
In the Valinco of the 1990s, while the war of clans rages, this touching road-movie where death mouchs without shouting station sensibly weaves a subsidiary relationship (between a father and a girl interpreted by non-professional actors) in direct proximity to a series of dramas. And as they get to know each other in the torn beauty of southern Corsica, this tragedy at the height of a child touches in the heart. A powerful first film!