Direction: Christophe Honoré
Country: France
Christophe Honoré's fifteenth feature, Winter Boy, is a heavy and uninspired semi-autobiographical drama starring Paul Kircher as Lucas, a high school student whose existence becomes unbearably painful after a family tragedy. It’s a personal look at the director’s grievous emotional state in the months following the death of his father, and the desperate attempt to find comfort, usually in the wrong places. The director also stars as Lucas’ father, a reflection of his own.
Often shot in claustrophobic close-up, the film is a full miss in its vain attempt to blend the dreamy and the depressing. Juliette Binoche, who plays Lucas’ helpless mother, is a shadow of herself; her superb acting qualities are wasted here.
The director of Love Songs (2007) and The Beautiful Person (2008) can’t quite get a handle on this cumbersome mess. Winter Boy is stilted, with deficient dynamics and questionable choices of monologues in front of the camera and explanatory voice-over. Losing energy along the way, what should have been done with melancholy grace, ends up in tedious disgrace. The strange mixture of vulnerability and strength that Honoré wanted to convey never convinces, and the film ends ridiculously, in flagrant hypocrisy.
