Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10395 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-07-28
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Formats: Anamorphic, Box set, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: Dutch, English, Italian
• Dubbed in: Italian
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 101 minutes

Special Features

• Interviews with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and Olivier Gourmet
  
• Stills gallery
  
• Filmographies
  
• Theatrical trailers of The Son, Rosetta and La Promesse

  DVD Technical Information:
  

  • Language: French
    
  • Subtitles: English, Dutch and Italian
    
  • French Dolby Digital 5.1 with optional Italian dubbing
    
  • Region Code: 2
    
  • Enhanced for widescreen TVs
    
  • Running time:
    Disc 1: 101 minutes
    Disc 2: 70 minutes

Synopsis
This intensely focused film from brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (LA PROMESSE, ROSETTA) follows Olivier (Olivier Gourmet), a man in mid-life working as a carpentry instructor in a blue collar French suburb. By day he teaches teenage boys how to work with wood. By night he leads a drab, solitary, routine existence. Olivier is a humble Everyman who could easily go unnoticed. However, the jarring sounds of his wood shop--sawing, hammering, slamming boards together--tell a different story, and set the tone for this simple but clearly dread-filled plotline. The camera violates Olivier with its constantly invasive, examining motion. It is behind his ears, up his nose, under his chin, and peering down the collar of his shirt. And as the film rolls, it becomes increasingly evident that Olivier is nervous, edgy, even seething about something deep inside. He develops a fascination with one of the boys in his class and nervously pursues the boy, offering him friendship and advice with a frightening lack of affection. Through forced spurts of dialogue and unexplained actions, Olivier's connection to the boy is slowly and painfully revealed. THE SON meditates on its own static tension, turning suspense into a gripping plotline all its own. Gourmet's performance is pointed and perfect, and it earned the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.

From the Back Cover
In their first film since the Palme d’Or-winning Rosetta, brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne present a subtle and disquieting study of a man whose life has been devastated by tragedy. Olivier Gourmet won the Best Actor Award at Cannes for his masterfully understated portrayal of a carpenter who teaches teenagers at a rehabilitation school. He is disturbed by the arrival of a new student, Francis (Morgan Marinne), and he struggles to maintain a professional distance in the boy’s presence. An ambiguous relationship develops between the two until the eventual revelation of a terrible secret from the past that binds them together. Utilising their trademark pared-down visual aesthetic to great effect, the Dardennes have crafted a riveting, strikingly powerful film of profound emotional and moral complexity.

Customer Reviews

Breathtaking
This outstanding low-budget film follows a man who teaches teenage boys carpentry in a vocational high school. A new pupil arrives who, unbeknown to the boy himself, has had a profoundly destructive effect on the man's life some years in the past. As a friendship gradually forms between them, both characters must eventually come to terms with their past. The camerawork is fascinating, the acting outstanding and the simple, disturbing plot is utterly compelling. If you're looking for something out of the ordinary with a bit of weight to it, give this film a go.

Parallel agonies.
A film which explores concurrent themes of cruelty and compassion, revenge and forgiveness. It will break your heart. To be watched alone, more than twice.

A replacement of sorts
The Son seems at times like an apprentice carpentry video.The tutor is a man whose face you never fully see or you see it side-on looking at the trainee's work efforts.He's quite tough and exacting but fair.He rejects then seemingly pursues and takes an interest in Francis the young man who's just been released from a penal institution,he says for theft,but there's a lot more to his crime than that.Olivier is a restless
pushy,easily annoyed sort of person.The carpentry seems of a certain
standard.It's a bit like watching non professional actors who've got a certain technical competence at what they do and have been given achance to act.What makes them very watchable is the secret drama that's taking place.There is a brash,energetic delivery to the film which makes it eminently watchable.I found Olivier's performance remarkable.The film on a lower level than Rosetta and The Promise in The Dardennes brothers
films.