C+

The closeness between two dissimilar brothers fostered by the older one’s illness is the subject of Patrice Chereau’s somber, almost clinically severe film. If “Son Frere” were made in Hollywood, or for American television, it would inevitably be done as an uplifting fable of the resiliency of the human spirit, even under the pressure of physical torment. But Chereau will have none of that. His treatment is filled with sorrow, but also with anger and incomprehension, and the most positive attitude it can muster is one of resignation in the face of a cruel, inexplicable fate. And his concentration on the details of bodily deterioration and medical treatment will probably be met with a mixture of discomfort and boredom on the part of many viewers. That’s not to say that “Son Frere” doesn’t have an emotional effect, just that it’s not one a lot of people will choose to experience, or appreciate if they do.

The film opens with Luc (Eric Caravaca), whose gay lifestyle has estranged him from his family, suddenly approached by his elder brother Thomas (Bruno Todeschini), who tells his sibling that he’s suffering from a blood ailment that leaves him weak and susceptible to life-threatening hemorrhages. Luc effectively drops his own affairs, including a relationship with his significant other Vincent (Sylvain Jacques), to accompany Thomas to the hospital for his extensive tests. Certainly their combative parents–angry father (Fred Ulysse) and reticent mother (Antoinette Moya)–are of little help, and Thomas’ girlfriend Claire (Nathalie Boutefeu) quickly bails out of their relationship.

The blood tests ultimately prove unsuccessful, and in the end Thomas undergoes a splenectomy–a procedure that’s depicted in excruciating detail: the shaving of the patient’s body (Thomas proves quite a hirsute individual) is recorded with nearly fetishistic exactitude, and the abdominal wound that results is shown in quite grisly closeup. In the end, though, the operation appears to have had little effect, and at the close Luc is still caring for Thomas at a seaside homestead, where they take occasional walks on the beach and encounter a voluble local man (Maurice Garrel), with whom they hold pessimistic conversations about death. Ultimately Thomas makes a final decision about his own fate.

This precis, however, makes the narrative more linear than it actually is. In the telling, Chereau switches periodically to the later seaside scenes, intending them, it would appear, as a kind of precognitive commentary on the broader story. The tactic doesn’t really come off, however, because despite titles that identify various months in the year, the exact chronology never becomes clear. More seriously, however, the entire film doesn’t manage to engage us emotionally to the extent that it should. The characters of the brothers aren’t drawn with sufficient depth or richness, and the detached, chilly way in which Chereau chooses to observe them leaves an emptiness at the picture’s center. Neither Caravaca nor Todeschini connects with the viewer on a visceral level, and so while one feels a certain regret at their plight, it fails to become as wrenching as it might. The problem is thrown into focus when a secondary character–a young man (Robinson Stevenin) whom Luc encounters in a hospital hallway–briefly hits the chord the larger story misses by expressing his terror at what’s happening to him. One can respect the director’s decision to reject the manipulative, mawkish approach that such material invites, but he goes too far in the opposite direction. Ultimately “Son Frere,” for all its admirable qualities, fails to move us. In the fashion of so much French intellectualism, it’s a cold, antiseptic dissection of a human reality. As such it might make a respectable dissertation, but it’s a disappointingly sterile film.