35 Shots of Rum
France 2008 100 minutes
Director: Clair Denis,
Starring: Alex Descas, Gregoire Colin, Ingrid Craven, Jean-Christophe Folly, Julieth Mars Touissant, Mati Diop and Nicole Dogue
Nominations and Awards
• One win and four nominations (including Best Director, Best Film and Best Ensemble Cast)
“There are no big, jarring cliches here; change is something that happens slowly, something to be thought about. Letting go isn’t easy, and this excellent, nuanced film refuses to pretend otherwise. It's a film you have to lean into, pay attention to and, careful now, think about”
Phelim O’Neill
Lionel (Alex Descas), a widowed train driver, has retreated in to a controlled and insular life, looking after Gabrielle (Mati Diop), his university age daughter and is almost isolated in his Paris apartment block apart from a small circle of friends. He knows that it’s time for a change and that Gabrielle needs to cut the apron strings, and then the catalyst arrives in the shape of Ruben (Jean-Christophe Folly), a worldly-wise student.
Clair Denis was born in francophone Africa and most of her films have been set there or concern people from these former colonies now living in France. In 35 Shots of Rum she also takes a few cues from the understated family dramas of Yaujiro Uzu, placing her actors as if she is setting up a still photograph and using long takes with a stationary camera, and with a tendency to frame scenes in long shot.
Clair Denis has made ten films since 1988 and the best of her early work is Beau Travail (1999), a loose transposition of Melville’s Billy Budd to a Foreign Legion barracks in Djibouti. Her most recent film is White Material (2009) starring Isabelle Huppert and Christopher Lambert which is set back in Africa and concerns a white French family struggling to save its coffee plantation in the face of political uprising among the local population.
She is also Professor of Film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
