No one in cinema has shown us black male beauty more admiringly than Claire Denis, who for my money is currently the world’s finest woman filmmaker. Ever since her 1988 debut Chocolat, the French director has often turned to such talented and fine-looking African and Afro-Caribbean actors as Isaach De Bankolé and Alex Descas. In Denis’s new film, 35 Shots of Rum, Descas plays Lionel, a widower of few words whose life as a train driver runs to a satisfying routine: he has the camaraderie of his colleagues (more like the group fun of cops in The Wire than the staged discourse of a Ken Loach film), and the doting love of his teenage daughter, Josephine (Mati Diop). But necessary change is looming: Lionel’s closest friend is being retired against his wishes; he is aware that his tight bond with Josephine must be loosened, yet he’s anxious about her friendship with Noe (Gregoire Colin), the music-biz boy who lives upstairs, while also gently trying to deflect the yearning of his ex-girlfriend and neighbour, Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue).
Descas’s performance makes a marvellous contemplative rock of Lionel, and Denis’s portrait of this ad-hoc family group mixes the smooth sweetness of the title’s tipple with the bluesy melancholy that touches many of her films. 35 Shots of Rum is a relatively conventional movie compared to the elliptical impressionism of Denis’s last, The Intruder, but I can’t think of a director who more thrillingly captures the language of look and gesture, aided as she is by the subtlety of her brilliant cinematographer, Agnes Godard. Some of that delicacy might be missed on DVD, so catch it at the cinema if you can.
Nick James is the editor of Sight & Sound
35 Shots of Rum is on general release from 10th July
