It’s best to clarify upfront that neither of this week’s Fandor picks are, as we like to say back in England, “a barrel of laughs.” Rather, Lance Hammer’s Ballast and Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children are both somber, sensitive and grueling tales of extreme depression and its deleterious effects upon family units.
Ballast—the feature directing debut of former VFX man Hammer—debuted at the 2008 Sundance film festival, where it picked up awards for both directing and cinematography. It’s set in the verdant expanse of the Mississippi Delta, and opens in the direct aftermath of a messy suicide. While his deceased twin brother decays in a nearby bedroom, the hulking Lawrence (Michael J. Smith Sr.) withdraws into a state of mute shock, unable to communicate. Before long, Lawrence also attempts suicide by gunshot, but is unsuccessful. The story unfolds in accordance with his gradual, glacially paced recovery.
Along the way, we’re also introduced to James (Jim Myron Ross), a moody, quiet 12-year-old; and his mother Marlee (Tarra Giggs), a downtrodden cleaner. James owes money to a local gang of marauding ne’er-do-wells, and tries to raise the bounty by systematically robbing the ineffectual, depressed Lawrence—an easy target—at gunpoint. Only after a while is the connection between James and Lawrence made clear: the dead man is James’s father, his mother the bereaved, estranged partner.
One could glance at the synopsis and assume that the film might occupy the same ‘misery porn’ hinterland as Precious, Monster’s Ball or Sunlight Jr., but Ballast’s tragically tangled lives are portrayed with grace, patience and honesty. Instead of scenery-chewing, caterwauling, Oscar-winning grief, Hammer traffics in the gritty stuff: erratic behavior, complex, inexplicable emotional shifts and painfully inarticulate exchanges. Character dislocation and isolation are woven into the film’s fabric, from the stark discrepancy between Lawrence’s imposing physical presence and his meek fragility, to Marlee’s weather-beaten face and James’ long, lonely bike rides. The strategic absence of a musical score, meanwhile, further amplifies the characters’ emptiness.
Ballast is also disconcertingly gorgeous to gaze upon. British cinematographer Lol Crawley (who’s since gone on to shoot prestige pics like Hyde Park on Hudson and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) creates one stunning widescreen tableau after another, though the spacious landscapes still feel claustrophobic: characters appear to drive for miles across acres of land but never really arrive anywhere. Hammer, meanwhile, displays a keen eye for sharp compositional detail and haunting imagery. Take, for example, the wall bloodied from Lawrence’s suicide attempt, an abandoned DJ booth in the middle of nowhere, or the plastic deer which stare out eerily across the front lawn.
Hammer’s film—incidentally the last one he’s directed to date—eventually allows some light to break through the dark clouds. There’s no such respite in Belgian director Joachim LaFosse’s version of a harrowing true-life story, Our Children. It begins, like Ballast, in the midst of familial torment. We’re shown four kid-size coffins being loaded onto a plane while a distressed, hospitalized woman Murielle (É milie Dequenne) exhorts her partner, Mounir (Tahar Rahim), to have “them” buried in Morocco, their “homeland.” We subsequently flash back to happier times when the pair (she a teacher, he a doc) is giddy on early romance. But LaFosse’s gamble—to foreground the heinous tragedy à la Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible—means that the damage is done. Everything that happens subsequently is smothered in a choking, foreboding shroud of unease and, particularly with regard to the happier moments, a terrible pathos: we know where this is going.
Our Children, like Ballast, is also not simply an indulgent misery-fest. It’s quite clearly fueled by a furious anger directed at two specific targets: socially entrenched patriarchal supremacy, and a malignant, lingering colonial influence. Both characteristics are embodied by the character of Dr André Pinget (Niels Arestrup, Rahim’s A Prophet co-star, giving a performance of slithering malevolence), the third prong in the troublingly triangulated central relationship. Pinget has housed and raised the Moroccan-born Mounir since childhood, and also married Mounir’s sister in order to give her Belgian residency papers. Pinget’s constant presence alienates and isolates Murielle, while simultaneously neutering Mounir, who is increasingly stripped of psychological and territorial independence.
At the heart of the tragedy is Murielle, who degrades from a bright, spirited woman into a depressed, hapless cipher before our eyes. It’s a stunning performance, rich in technical control: Dequenne’s kind, open face seems to morph imperceptibly, assuming a chilling blankness that suggests individual nerves are being systematically flicked off like switches. In the most memorable sequence—filmed in a merciless long take—Murielle breaks down while driving and singing an innocuous ditty by French crooner Julien Clerc. Dequenne picked up the Un Certain Regard Award for Best Actress at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and it’s easy to see why.
Relentlessly oppressive and slowly paced, Our Children is an intensely tough watch, but is nevertheless a bold artistic response to the tabloid oversimplification and outrage which often accompanies horrific and “inexplicable” cases of infanticide. LaFosse—who, like Hammer, is still yet to direct another film—leaves us with more questions than answers, but deserves credit for unflinchingly exploring the conditions under which something so horrific might occur.
Ballast and Our Children are available to stream on Fandor.