A Son is a beautiful but ultimately uninspiring directorial debut

By Siavash Minoukadeh, Entertainment Sub-Editor

2019 was a year of highs and lows, in cinema and the wider world. Entertainment Sub-Editor Siavash Minoukadeh was lucky enough to catch a series of premieres at the London Film Festival, including A Son (Bik Eneich: Un Fils, 2019).

In even the darkest of films, there will still always be a few moments of comedy. Or, failing that, at least a few scenes that are a little more lighthearted. This is indeed the case in A Son, Tunisian director Mehdi M Barsaoui’s debut, but they all seem to come right at the beginning of the film. What follows is an emotionally gruelling ride, taking one dark turn after another.

When Aziz (Youssef Khemiri) - the son around whom the film is centred - is shot by terrorists in the first twenty minutes of the film, the tone of the rest of the film is made clear. As his parents - played Sami Bouajila and Najla Ben Abdallah - fight to save his life they take increasingly drastic measures, while family secrets spill out.

Both Bouajila and Ben Abdallah have to work hard throughout the film: having to make each scene feel original is a challenge given that for the majority of the film’s runtime, they’re expressing essentially the same emotion. They do, for the most part, manage it despite the fact that the camera is almost always featuring a close-up of their face. Almost every shot is dripping with tension.

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With most of the scenes taking place in a hospital corridor or a car, Antoine Héberlé’s cinematography also creates a sense of claustrophobia: the faces are tightly framed and there is little metaphorical breathing space. Drawing the audience into the family’s drama, it’s hard not to feel invested. Towards the end of the film, there are also some gorgeous shots of the Tunisian landscape which provide a beautiful contrast with the intense close-ups and remind us of the wider context in which this very personal story is taking place.

Barsaoui manages to integrate a critique of the social situation in Tunisia. Set in 2011, the Arab Spring provides a - very broad - background to the action. Initially the family, being upper middle class, seem to be able to rise above all the political tension. Yet as Aziz’s situation becomes more desperate, they find themselves having to engage with the country’s strict moral laws and the conflict and crime raging across the border in Libya.

It was a remarkable achievement that some moments still managed to draw a collective gasp from the audience

However, whilst this commentary does serve to elevate A Son to something greater than a family drama, it also has the effect of over-intensifying the plot. Every conceivable twist is used to draw out the liver transplant that Aziz needs to survive, to the extent that it’s difficult to have hope any longer by the final scenes of the film. Even when the film does reach its supposedly happy resolution, it’s been such a draining ride to get there that there’s little relief.

There are some positive aspects of having a plot like this: it’s not what we’re used to in Western cinema - although relentlessly grim plots are more common in Middle Eastern and North African film - and as such, it can shock in a way we don’t normally see. Watching A Son in a screening filled with critical journalists and cynical filmmakers, it was a remarkable achievement that some moments still managed to draw a collective gasp from the audience.

However, it ultimately has to be asked if there’s any value in overwhelming the audience with dark turn after dark turn. Having lost hope of a happy outcome early on in the film, the twists the plot went on to take had less of an emotional impact on me. Having lost hope, I didn’t have as much investment in the film, since I was already resigned to a bad outcome.

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Unsurprisingly then, I didn’t enjoy watching A Son. If we define a good film as an enjoyable one it would fail - but what it did manage to do was expose me to a style of visual storytelling so different to the tried-and-tested structures of Western cinema and on those grounds, it’s definitely worth a watch. Just make sure you’re in a good place when you watch it, because you definitely won’t be afterwards.

Featured: IMDb / Cinétéléfilms

Did A Son's overly twisted plot leave you feeling hopeless or inspired?