Thirteen-year-old Vicgtor (Romain Paul) has to pull off quite a balancing act in Alix Delaporte’s poignant THE LAST HAMMER BLOW
CINÉSALON: THE LAST HAMMER BLOW (LE DERNIER COUP DE MARTEAU) (Alix Delaporte, 2014)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, July 5, $14, 4:00 & 7:30 (later screening introduced by Mathieu Fourne)
212-355-6100
fiaf.org
www.palacefilms.com
For their work in Alix Delaporte’s 2010 drama, Angèle et Tony, Clotilde Hesme, as Angèle, won the César for Most Promising Actress and Grégory Gadebois, as Tony, was named Most Promising Actor. For his film debut in Delaporte’s 2014 follow-up, the gentle, tender-hearted The Last Hammer Blow, playing at FIAF on July 5, teenager Romain Paul, portraying Victor, the illegitimate son of characters played by Hesme and Gadebois, won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor at the Venice International Film Festival. (Hesme and Gadebois also both starred in the French television series The Returned.) Victor is a sullen thirteen-year-old soccer phenom living with his mother, Nadia (Hesme), in a lonely trailer park. They have run out of money as Nadia battles cancer and considers selling their home and moving in with her estranged parents. When Victor’s father, famous conductor Samuel Rovinski (Gadebois), arrives to lead a performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony at the local opera house, Victor confronts him, but Rovinski at first denies that he has a son. But Victor persists in visiting the maestro, all the while not telling his mother that he is being considered for a spot in a prestigious soccer program. In addition, his hormones start raging as he begins noticing that one of his neighbors, Luna (Mireia Vilapuig), is blossoming into quite a beautiful young girl. The various parts of his life converge suddenly, putting him in a precarious position as he is forced to make some difficult decisions.
The Last Hammer Blow is a touching, sensitively told coming-of-age tale, anchored by a breakout performance by Paul, who imbues Victor with a mixture of compassion and ennui, keeping him at an even keel no matter what he faces. Hesme (Love Songs, Mysteries of Lisbon) is heartbreaking as a mother running out of options, and Gadebois (One of a Kind, Une femme dans la Révolution) excels as a bold, strong man who can’t just wave his conductor’s baton and make the past go away. Delaporte’s second film is a character-driven study filled with a poignant humanity that avoids melodrama and cliché in favor of honesty and genuine surprise. Claire Mathon (Angèle et Tony, Mon roi, Two Friends) earned her first of three Lumières Award nominations for her evocative cinematography, and Evgueni and Sacha Galperine’s soundtrack is bittersweet and subtle, especially in the shadow of the grand Mahler symphony. The Last Hammer Blow is screening at 4:00 and 7:30 on July 5 in FIAF’s CinéSalon series “Burning Bright: New French Filmmakers”; the later screening will be introduced by Mathieu Fournet of the French Embassy. The series continues Tuesday nights in July with Arnaud Viard’s Paris, Love, Cut, Thomas Salvador’s Vincent, and Jean-Charles Hue’s Eat Your Bones.