Director: Bouli Lanners. Belgium, 2011. 84 minutes. Cert: CLUB. Language: French (subtitled).
Winner – CICAE Award, Cannes Film Festival 2011
“a lovely drunken roll of a movie, brightly played by its adolescent cast, luxuriating in a Belgian countryside of whispering grass and fairytale forests” – The Guardian
This hilarious coming-of-age story takes its cues from Mark Twain in exploring uncharted adolescent adventure. Two teenage brothers expect yet another dull summer, until Danny arrives and they begin the most perilous and greatest journey of their lives.
Seth and Zak and their tag-along friend navigate a summer by themselves in an abandoned country cottage. As they scavenge for food, hunt for pot and pursue harebrained schemes to make money, they find their bravado repeatedly punctured by the rigours of an adult world they cannot comprehend.
Twain’s Huckleberry Finn take-off is transplanted to the actor-turned-director’s native Belgian countryside. Shot with a painter’s eye for the lushly wooded landscape, and filled with Bouli Lanners’ bittersweet humour and feel for the rhythms of working class life, THE GIANTS is a funny yet melancholic ode to the idleness, adventures and fears of adolescence.
Read The Hollywood Reporter’s review from Cannes.
Here’s what the San Francisco International Film Festival says.
