The Son
A carpentry teacher at a youth centre quietly takes on a new teenage apprentice, who turns out to be the boy who killed his young son years earlier.
Cannes Film Festival, Best Actor (Olivier Gourmet), 2002
The Son follows Olivier, a joinery instructor at a vocational centre for troubled adolescents, filmed in the Dardenne brothers' close, unadorned style. A new boy arrives seeking training, and Olivier recognises him as the child who, years before, killed his own young son. Rather than turn him away, Olivier watches, hesitates, and takes him on, and the film holds the almost unbearable tension of a man teaching the person who destroyed his family.
It is a study of mourning carried in the body and of murderous rage held in check within the same room as care. The film asks what forgiveness might mean when it is neither spoken nor resolved, and how a bereaved parent lives alongside the source of his loss. Olivier Gourmet won Best Actor at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
Details
- 2002
- Belgium
- French
- Film