Eastern Boys (東歐美少年)

The HKIFF has begun for me. It's always a time of rushing about, of expectations, of excitement, of reflection, of surprises and hopefully, not disappointment. My first film is one of quiet, sensitive and intimate observation. The eye of the camera surveys everything, sometimes closing in on the face, on the hands on the body of the protagonists, on the walls, the clocks, the tables, chairs, the the blinds, bed, the plates of food ...but more often follows the scenes and the events which unfurls on the screen from a distance as if they were something general, almost abstract, as if what we see is what we get, mere impressions, without intentions, without plans, without expectations, without judgment.

The film Eastern Boys opens thus from a huge distance people coming, going, with bags or luggage behind them, each hurrying towards their destination at the Gare du Nord, Paris. In the meantime, we see some tall and thin young men, but with one midget climbing on to the back of another and being carried by him, hugging each other as a greeting and then loitering about, waiting for their chance to steal from careless travellers and being watched over by the vigilant security guards who would stare at them, whereupon, the young men would quickly go away as if they did not know what the guards are doing. A middle age man, in an overcoat and with a leather shoulder bag would enter the hall, look around as if waiting for somebody but in fact not. Finally, he approaches one of the young men, accosts him. The young man appears to know instantly what he wants. 50 Euros, 6.30 p.m. the following day, at his place. The following day comes. The middle aged men opens the door. It isn't the young man who agreed to come but the midget, who calls himself Marek, the name the young man gave to him the previous day. And following him, a whole bunch of young man, led by their leader. They open his frige, his wine cabinet and help themselves to everything they can find. They dance to the latest music and start removing all his furniture, item by item and pack them into a waiting van downstairs. The middle aged man watches helplessly and when invited to drink and dance with them, does what he was told, apparently finding it useless to resist in such circumstances. One against 7 or 8, especially their leader, who deliberately dresses in such a way to display the strong muscles of his arms and back? He knows better. They leave. He's alone in an empty house, sitting on the floor. He Days later, at 6.30 p.m. he has a visitor. It's Marek, who earlier told him at the station that he "does everything". He asks him if he still wants him. He does. A relationship develops, body for money. As the film unwinds, it develops into something less strictly commercial. The teenage boy and his friends come from East Europe, Ukraine, Russia etc, illegal immigrants, without papers, without families, without education, without skills, without hope and survive on violence or the threat of violence, their nimble fingers on their careless victims and on their street smartness. We see how the older man buys the young man T-shirts, jackets, teaches him French and how instead of the boy allowing him to enter his behind, he begins to suck the boy and how instead of paying him each time, his begins to pay him by the week, then by the month and how eventually, he merely gives him pocket money and buys him whatever he needs. The boy seems genuinely happy with him and tells him his real name, where he came from and details of his diseased family members. The man proposes to help him regularize his status and for this purpose, Marek needs to get back his passport.

Marek goes back to the hotel, steals the key from his gang leader, and just as he is trying desperately to try the key on one after another locker, whose number he has forgotten, his gang leader appears and tells Marek the correct number and that if Marek wants his passport back, all he got to do is to ask. Marek gets a good thrashing, his face being squashed by the soles of his leader's sports shoes, has his mouth sealed with packing tape, his hands tied behind his back and is thrown into a storeroom at the hotel.

Earlier, the man gets a message from the boy that he's at the hotel but thereafter fails to get any further message. He becomes anxious, drives to the hotel, sure that the boy is there, takes up a room, hears some groans at the end of the corridor where his room is, asks the hotel keeper to help him open the door, something she refuses because she says it belongs to the Department of the Social Security. He begs her to. She relents. He finds the boy. They try to escape. As a precaution, he calls the police. At the nick of time, the police arrive, the gang members all run for their lives. Some got arrested but the leader escapes and hides in the garage and when he finds the man trying to help the boy on to his car, tries to stop them, but in his desire to protect the boy, the man suddenly finds the power and courage to put both his hands around gang leader's throat. They escape.

We next see them in an adoption court. The judges say that they have got all the information they need and that a decision will be delivered and they will be informed. The film ends.

Eastern Boys, with screen play by Laurent Cantet (The Class) who co-scripted the film directed by Robin Campillo, starring Olivier Rabourdin as the middle aged homosexual Daniel and Kirill Emelyanov as Marek, is Campilo's second feature film (his first being Les Revenants about 6 years ago).

I like the way Campillo narrates his story, purely in images and short crisp and telling dialogues.e.g how he buys an Apple for Marek when he says hesitantly that it'd be nice to have one, a flat-screen TV when he says he likes to watch TV, the way he teaches Marek French, the way he looks at Marek, the way he risks his life to save Marek from his gang, always calm, apparently passive but always sensitive and attentive. We don't know anything until the events unfold. We have always to keep what will happen next, especially for the last half hour of the film whose tone switches quickly and suddenly from one of intimacy to one of thriller-type suspense. We see a slice of life from two marginal groups in Paris: the middle-aged homosexual with his unusual sexual needs and the insecurity confusion of teenage refugees from East Europe haunted by horrible childhood fears of war back home joined by two basic human instincts: the need to physically survive and the need for affection.

Campillo doesn't seem anxious to push any "message" whether moral, social, political or philosophical. He merely shows us what he wants us to see. He doesn't have to tell us anything and he doesn't. Perhaps that's the appeal of the film for me. Of course. a great deal of the credit must go to the excellent performance of the two protagonists: they never overdo anything. They seem to know the power of understatement. That applies too to Daniel Vorobyev, the swaggering and apparently cool-headed and cynical "boss" of the East European teenage gang who in his peculiar way has a certain James Dean like charisma about him. The screenplay is neat and intelligent and when inside Daniel's bedchambers, always colored slightly by a neutral light blue, bathing everything which transpires in a mood of intimate serenity. The film won the Best International Feature award at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2014 and the Venice Horizons Award at the Venice Film Festival 2013.