"Le fils de Jean" or "A Kid" is a French film from 2016 that took almost until 2018 to finally hit German theaters. It runs for slightly over 1.5 hours and got its 2 male protagonists a solid deal of awards recognition. There is a really long list of writers attached to this project and one of them is Philippe Lioret, who is of course also the director here. You could definitely call this film a family drama. It is about one man's journey from Paris to Canada to find (out about) his father that he never met before in his life. And there he experiences a lot more than he had expected. Okay if we are honest, everybody with a trained eye for movies instantly realized the plot twist towards the end 10 minutes into this movie. The camera shots and dialogue writing gave this one away oh so quickly. And as almost the entire first half is all about that, I personally found the second half better. It was clear that the man was nothing like his two greedy and drunk "brothers" or their womanizer dad, even if the latter may have had his good sides too as we find out when they say he immediately would have gotten the cancerous old man to a hospital. The cancer story line did feel a bit rushed admittedly and only there for the sake of it getting some easy emotions out of the audience. Same about the violent ex-boyfriend part. The mother/grandmother's depiction of knowing what was going on, but not being able to talk about it to her husband was something I quite liked. Definitely among the much better aspects of the film. Overall thanks to the improvement and the insight into the family with some solid writing about and acting by the members, this film quickly reached terrain where I would recommend checking it out with no hesitation. Moments of greatness you maybe won't find too many if at all, but the strong ensemble performance here makes this one certainly worth checking out in my opinion. I liked the starting romance that eventually was not needed though in order for this to become a quality movie. It's tough to filter out one area, aspect or performance that I liked the most, but there are also no major weaknesses in here, almost no weaknesses at all I'd even say. A well-rounded effort this is, especially in the second half. Not necessarily a film that is worth more seeing on the big screen than on the small screen at your home, but you really cannot do anything wrong with this one. Oh yeah, also make sure you have French subtitles if you don't want to see a dubbed version, unless you speak the language. Enough now. This one wants to be seen.
Review of A Kid
