By Roger Costa
The world envisioned by French writer turned director Thomas Bidegain is as unpredictable as life is itself. The paths he had penned for the last decade are accurate and synchronized with the harsh depths of reality we experience in modern days. He is responsible for some recent respectable realistic takes on human condition (and violence) as he wrote Jacques Audiard’s three last films “A Prophet”, “Rust and Bone” and “Dheepan” and this amazing collaboration had motivated and shaped aspects of his directorial debut which is “Les Cowboys”, a Cannes a New York Film Festival sensation that has been self-described as a modern take on John Ford’s classic “The Searchers”.
Bidegain demonstrates a similar powerful control as a competent director making it a promising initialization: he conducts the mysterious disappearance story with extreme naturalism as much as his promptly raw and honest writing aesthetic. The atmosphere is cheerful, but nothing is what it seems. The peaceful routine of a family is suddenly turned into a somber experience, as a father goes anxiously desperate trying to figure out his daughter’s disappearance, when she goes missing at a cowboy party reunion. He initiates a dangerous investigation that will lead him to face terrorist conflicts abroad and perhaps find clues for his daughter’s location. As he moves around carrying a disturbing sense of a ticking-bomb throughout the search, unexpected events occur along the way, forcing his young son to engage in the quest for his sister as well.
Suspenseful and incredibly original, performed with intense awareness of the entire cast (look for John C. Reilly in a small part) and supported by the engrossing dark cinematography, “Les Cowboys” will get you on the edge with its out-of-nowhere twists. Bidegain had achieved a fearlessly masterful work that confirms his status as one of the most talented professional in the field of storytelling. The mutual lessons exchanged with Audiard had helped him develop an over-the-top directorial debut and “Les Cowboys” is the affirmation of that. Bidegain is an artist to be followed very close.
LES COWBOYS (Opens Friday, June 24th at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and Angelika Film Center in NYC. A Cohen Media Group Release)
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