Disco Boy, starring Franz Rogowski, who was so extraordinary in last year’s Passages, does indeed have propulsive beats on its soundtrack. But though the idea of club dancing as catharsis is central to its resolution, much of the film’s action takes place in settings of war and preparation for war. A striking first feature that might be too surrealistic for some and not enough so for others, this is a hard movie to pin down, which may be why it lingers in the mind.
For his debut feature, the gifted, Italian-born writer/director Giacomo Abbruzzese deftly channels a bevy of heady influences, from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Coppola’s film adaptation, Apocalypse Now, to Claire Denis’s classic French Foreign Legion drama, Beau Travail, itself a riff on Melville’s Billy Budd. There might even be a hint of Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, a great, hallucinatory novel about a soldier walking out of the jungles of Vietnam, hoping to get to Paris. Those who are a bit fuzzy on such influences won’t be lost. The filmmaker folds them in organically and leads instead with setting and character.
In France, Aleksei joins the Legion, which promises at the end of five years’ service a French passport and even a new name. For a man without papers, this is nirvana.
Abbruzzee opens, enigmatically, with shots of sleeping soldiers in a jungle setting and of a beautiful woman and a commanding man, a leader, who, like her, gazes directly into the camera as if daring us to reduce them to stereotype. This is the Niger Delta. She is Udoka (Laëtitia Ky) and he is her brother, Jomo (Morr Ndiaye). Keep them in mind. The director will return to them after a long detour to Europe.
In Poland, Aleksei (Rogowski), a young Belarusian immigrant without national identity papers, and his friend Mikhail (Mical Balicki) slip away from a tourist bus to make their way to the countryside, and ultimately, they hope, to France, where they plan to join the French Foreign Legion. Late on a rainy night, to encourage one another as they try to cross the turbulent waters of the Oder River, the two men call out “Bordeaux!” and “Crème Caramel” — their notion of the essence of French life. Only one will survive.
In France, Aleksei joins the Legion, which promises at the end of five years’ service a French passport and even a new name. For a man without papers, this is nirvana. Meanwhile, in Nigeria, Jomo has gathered together the young men of his village to fight against the American and European oil companies whose refineries are poisoning the land and water. This small band of militants knows how to wave their guns and look fierce for a visiting VICE TV reporter, but behind the macho bluster, they’re sweetly young, and probably in over their heads. An aerial wide shot of the Gulf of Guinea coastline, with smoke-spewing smokestacks and refinery fires filling the skyline, is crushing. The film’s sterling cinematography is by Hélène Louvart (The Lost Daughter).
When Jomo and his men kidnap three French oil execs, Aleksei and five other Legion soldiers arrive to launch a rescue. Is this Aleksei’s first mission? Abbruzzese isn’t big on details (which might drive some viewers crazy), but since Aleksei is acting as team leader, probably not. But this may be one fight too many. The sight of government soldiers burning Jomo and Udoka’s village upsets him. He wants to help, but can’t. We don’t know Aleksei’s life story, but maybe there are echoes of someone he lost in the past in the terror he’s witnessing on this night. Disco Boy, it would seem, is all about mirrored histories.
From here, the film glides into Heart of Darkness territory. Falling into the Niger River, Aleksei and Jomo fight each other, brutally, and in the aftermath Aleksei does what he was unable to do for Mikhail that terrible night on the Oder: He pulls Jomo from the river. Is Aleksei a soldier in this moment and in the poignant minutes that follow, or is he simply acting as a citizen of the world?
On leave in Paris, Aleksei goes to a club and finally orders “Bordeaux.” As he gulps his wine he sees a masked female dancer onstage, who will trigger something akin to a psychic break in him. Maybe it’s been coming for a while. Maybe he’s haunted by events on the Niger. His commander says Aleksei risks becoming a “ghost.” Perhaps he’s about to be truly free.
Rogowski gives nothing away but somehow suggests all possibilities. In its final scenes, Disco Boy echoes the troop and solo dance movements from the much revered Beau Travail, a mad and nervy move a young director would only dare when he has a lead as riveting and emotionally daring as Franz Rogowski. He’s a reason to go back to the movies. ❖
Disco Boy opens at the Quad on February 2.
Chuck Wilson is a Los Angeles–based writer who has written for the L.A. Weekly for over 25 years and has been a longtime contributor to the Village Voice.
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