Film No. 29. THE KINGDOM (LE ROYAUME) Palace Aust. French FF (2025). 14th April.

 

Film No. 29  (2024)  April 14th.  1:30 PM  PALACE Raine Sq, Cinema 3, Perth City.

"We are all scared. With the life we lead, we breathe fear. It's the life we choose." (Lesia's askes her father Pierre if he is scared. He answers her).

NOMINEE: Un Certain Regard (Julien Colonna) Cannes FF.

 

When it comes to the Mafia landscape around the regions of Corsica and Sicily, which of the two were more violent? l'Express recently described Corsica as the "winner". LE ROYAUME takes us to the 1990's and gives us a riveting insight into that landscape; a Corsican gang through the eyes of innocence.

 Watching 15 year old Lesia (Ghjuranna Benedetti) come of age in the "arms" of her gang (Mafia) boss father Pierre (Saverium Santucci) is both loving, emotional and exhilarating, particularly if one has fathered teenage girls. Director Julien Colonna has created a small masterpiece in this emotion charged fiction, focusing on the senselessness of the mafia wars that raged on the French ruled island, in the mid nineties. He has much to say which may lead to a Google search or two later. It makes one wonder how sacrificing family for a life of revenge drives Pierre here. Benedetti must have been a directors gift. To think she was twenty when playing Lesia. She is in every scene, and she owns the screen! She's the reason we question her father's life choices.

How could such love and care between a father and daughter as he instructs her on how to shoot a rifle, be so prophetic? This may repel a potential audience. I hope not because Colonna, in his first feature, shows himself to be an empathetic and skilled film maker.  11GUMS.