Following his indelible performances in Undine and Great Freedom, one might reasonably suppose that we had already viewed Franz Rogowski at his most haunted.
Prepare to be disabused of this idea. In Giacomo Abbruzzese’s electrifying debut, the soulful, shape-shifting German actor plays Aleksei, a young Belarusian, who makes a perilous trek through Europe to enlist in the Foreign Legion.
A sequence not unlike a more civilised rendition of the first part of Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket confirms the character’s commitment to his new life.
A continent away, Jomo, a young revolutionary in the Niger Delta, is fighting the multinationals that threaten his community and way of life. Away from the conflict, he loves to throw strange shapes with his sister and fellow insurrectionary guerrilla fighter, Udoka (essayed by Ivorian women’s activist Laetitia Ky).
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The dancing twinship between the heterochromatic Jomo and Udoka grafts a strange, visually hypnotic dimension on to an already witchy brew. During a conversation with a comrade, Jomo confesses that he would love to be a “disco boy”; his friend romantically describes an imagined life as a croupier.
Hélène Louvart’s outlandishly good-looking cinematography and Vitalic’s entrancing electronic score help to merge these disparate stories into a memorable collision. The infrared of the legionnaires’ collective vision makes for a nightmarish spectacle that bleeds into the supernatural third act.
Writer-director Abbruzzese was initially inspired by the similarities of bodily mastery required by soldier and dancer, a notion that his wildly imaginative, meticulously crafted script has embellished into the trippiest possible dance movie. The angular choreography feels bound to creepy, ancient tales of possessed limbs.
Aleksei’s masculinity, initially defined by rowdy football support and rigid army training, is continually challenged and transformed. Themes of imperialism and exploitation add background textures to three muscular performances and a mysterious cinematic adventure.
