The French film Jouer avec le feu (that translates as playing with fire, English title The Quiet Son) deals with a phenomenon that extends beyond the boundaries of its home country. It’s a terrifying exploration of the widespread, worldwide affliction, of political divides cutting through families and tearing the most intimate of relationships apart.
Based on Laurent Petitmangin's novel What You Need from the Night, it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for French icon Vincent Lindon.
Lindon plays a single, widowed father, Pierre, who raises two sons in Grand Est, France. As his younger son, Louis (Stefan Crepon), leaves home to attend university in Paris, the older boy, Fus (Benjamin Voisin), becomes increasingly detached and cut off from the family.
Seduced by and incredibly attracted to the far-right, he finds himself crossing swords with his own liberal, leftist working-class father at the other end of the ideological spectrum. As he gets steadily unruly, obstinate and intractable, uncontainable bigotry gets unleashed and violence begins to spread like wildfire. The consequences of the radicalisation of Fus turn out unimaginably catastrophic, the stuff of horror rather than reality.
The film dwells upon the “us versus them” divide, the rise of anarchists and fundamentalists and asks a significant question: “Why do you hate everyone who is not like you?”. It also contextualises the anxiety and discontent of the young in light of the economic downturn and rising unemployment.
As Fus puts it, “We are just cannon fodders.” However, the film doesn’t choose to go deeper into socio-economic and political reality—neither going right nor left. Having said that, the film makes up for the lack of political acuity with the sensitivity with which it deals with personal equations and keeps the audience engaged and invested in its protagonists.
The pivotal father-son relationship is underlined with genuineness and authenticity. Will the polarisation come between the essential love and affection the two men have for each other? The film addresses some fundamental challenges and predicaments of parenting in the contemporary times of extremities—can politics alter your relationship with your progeny? How to patiently hold on to them even as they change unrecognizably? How to not let the significant bond between you break? Most so, how to ensure that the prodigal son comes back to the fold?
There is a solidity, depth and gravitas to Lindon’s on-screen persona of the conflicted Father France as the embattled son Voisin is the perfect edgy and unsettled counterfoil to Lindon. There’s a charm to him in spite of the problematic indoctrination and the overwhelming rage. Crepon is equally effective as the younger son, the centre between the two, trying very hard to have the family hold on.
The filmmakers are non-judgmental in this straight and simple domestic drama and don’t consciously make heroism or villainy out of political convictions. The characters feel more like creatures of unfortunate circumstances.
The Quiet Son comes with a bleakness attached and the filmmakers don’t look at reality with rose-tinted glasses. However, their own tenet—of humaneness and benevolence—is more than implicit and shines through in every frame. They do underscore the need for love to win over hate; and what’s to argue with that, especially if that’s the only way back home?