“Eastern Boys” – An Eastern Block [MOVIE REVIEW]
“Eastern Boys,” was presumably a well-intentioned love story coming from a different angle. If only director Robin Camillo, who also wrote and edited this effort, had had a clearer vision of what angle he was coming from. Certainly “Eastern Boys” is a love story from the perspective of looking for love in all the wrong places. Camillo was obviously intrigued by the subculture of illegals hiding in plain sight in the shadier neighborhoods of Paris and how they skirt the law to try to subsist. In this particular case the group being tracked are young 20-something Ukrainians who have banded together to strike as a unified force under the wing of a charismatic young thug whose on-the-nose handle is “Boss,” played by a scene-stealing and forceful Daniil Vorobov. The strength, and perhaps only strength, of the film lies in its opening, a tracking of the Ukrainian boys outside and within the train station as they scope out targets and avoid the police with only the ambient street noise as background. One can instantly sense the illegality and desperation as the gang of young men splinter, come together, and disappear in plain sight. It is this game of hide and seek that draws in the audience as the boys are targeted by the police like jungle animals trying to out-maneuver a stronger but less agile enemy. And then they, in turn, recognize a target and the prey he is stalking and calculate how to pounce on him at his most vulnerable spot.
Their prey is Daniel played by Olivier Rabourdi, a Kevin Spacey look-alike without any discernible emotional investment, either in the film or in his character, a middle aged bourgeois business man seeking rent boys at the Gare du Nord. No doubt thinking that the gang of illegal Ukrainian boys are akin to low hanging fruit, he targets Marek, a soft young man with haunted eyes, for an arrangement. Played by Kirill Emelyanov, Marek refuses an immediate hook-up but instead agrees to come to Daniel’s apartment the next day to do for 50 Euros whatever his heart desires. And because Daniel is an idiot, he gives the boy his address. Lo and behold, the very next day it is the gang who shows up, invades his home and strips it of everything of value, leaving only some of the furniture.
One would think that this encounter and the set-up would have made him both older and wiser; but no. When, a few days later, Marek shows up at his door, they begin a pay-to-play relationship and one that they would have us believe blossoms into something greater than just sex. Depending entirely on a soulful look and an expositional story of the horrors of Chechnya where he grew up and his family was killed, Camillo abdicates all character development. He is also, no doubt, trying to illustrate two different kinds of family and the support each brings to Marek, but as one is toxic and the other is too undeveloped, the parallels fall short of the mark. Further, as this is presumably a gay love story, the sex isn’t particularly erotic or earth shattering.
Camillo demands that we take the burgeoning mutual relationship on faith so that when Daniel is put in the position that he must rescue Marek from the gang that has turned on him we are asked to suspend belief. At this point in the scenario, Daniel is the poker-faced hero banging down doors, outwitting the police and outrunning the gang for the young man who is now more a son to him. And then it ends.
Wholly unsatisfying, interminable in length with marginal acting, at best, there is little but the opening 15 minutes and the mesmerizing Daniil Vorobov to recommend this film. It was, perhaps, a brave choice, if indeed it was intended, on the part of the director to eliminate a rooting interest but it highlights the difficulty of caring for anyone or anything in the film. As trite as it might sound, the dilemma of a generation of “lost boys” and what they do to survive and the genesis of their amorality might have generated some sympathy and more importantly some interest. That this film has been nominated for numerous important awards and won several at film festivals around the world is a mystery.
Opening Friday May 1 at the Laemmle NoHo 7