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Fresh and Exciting

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The Lost Son (1999)All the elements are here for a classic noir-inspired investigation movie where no one is to be trusted and our leading man is a likable, steady, world weary paradigm. If you are familiar with "The Big Sleep" with Bogart and crew, you might actually get a sense of what this movie is trying to do. Not only does the plot begin in a similar way, with a rich family saying one of their members (the son) is missing and with the daughter being a steamy and somewhat unreliable secondary force (played by Nastassja Kinski), but then the rest of the movie proceeds to get increasingly confusing.In "The Big Sleep" this is almost a positive thing, making it fast, visual, and experiential (meaning you get sucked into the world and can't stop looking and trying to keep up). Here, in "The Lost Son," it isn't what anyone would call fast, which hurts it because the complexity builds and the suspicions fester with lots of lulls, either whole short scenes that don't seem quite necessary or with an editing that makes every little cut one or two seconds too long. Which adds up to a kind of pace some people might like, a loitering and inhabiting this strange little nether world the movie creates. But for me it just made me fuzz out a little.The leading detective, Xavier Lombard, is played by the really compelling French actor, Daniel Auteuil. He carries the movie even through it's pauses. Besides Kinski, whose role is small (and thankfully, really--she doesn't really "act" so much as say her lines), there is a second male lead, the Irish actor Ciaran Hinds, who is quite good. (He had a terrific role in the peculiar and enjoyable "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.") And the filming is rather nice, with a huge range of scenes and moods, held together not only by the camera-work, but the solid directing by Chris Menges.There will be an odd feel to this film for some American viewers, because it's an increasingly common hybrid of French and British filmmaking--language, crew, cast, and locations all spread out from one side of the Channel to the other. It's nicely European, but less of that familiar "British" film that many people know (or know without knowing they know it, looking vaguely like Hollywood). In short, this has a slightly fresh look. It does not however feel as new or odd or wonderful as some of the detective crime films coming out of, say, Scandinavia, among the European types.This matters only in that half of the film is its atmosphere. The plot and some of the core acting could use a bolstering and maybe even a sense of necessity at times (the movie just keeps going through its attractive paces), but in all, it might even be a film you'd enjoy more the second time. Which says a lot.

It is interesting that "8MM," with a plot so similar, came out the same year. I found this film more interesting and believable and far less dark and stomach-turning. It is well-filmed and acted with some interesting locations. The tension is well-metered. I enjoyed the colorfulness of the filming. The cosmopolitan/European flavor lends a great deal. I enjoyed the music as well. I would see this film again with a friend.

Violence, abuse, psychological drama, and sexual predation are real, and they're portrayed shockingly here, as is appropriate. Be warned. It makes you want to become an activist or a vigilante. Where was the law? Where were the other tradtional protectors? Can it ever be prevented and will it ever end?

For Daniel Auteuil, `Queen Margot' was much better. For Nastassja Kinski, `Paris, Texas' was much better. The biggest disappointments were from Chris Menges (`CrissCross' and `A World Apart' cannot even be compared with this one), and Goran Bregovic for use of a version of the same musical theme from `Queen Margot' for this movie (Attention to the end of the film). If this was an American pop movie, I would not feel surprised at all; but for a European film with more independent actors and director, a similar common approach about child abuse with no original insight is very simple-minded and disappointing. There are those bad guys who kidnap and sell the underage people. There are those poor children who hate people selling them and wait to be saved by someone. And finally, there is that big hero who kills all the bad guys and saves these poor children from bad guys. Every character is shown in simple black and white terms: the good versus the evil. Plus, from the very beginning, I could understand how the story would end. Is this the end of the history of child sexual abuse? I believe that the difficult issue of child molestation and paedophilia is much more complex than how it is portrayed in this not very original movie. I think this movie was not disturbing, but very disappointing.