CINEMA: Also On Release This Week - The Giants
Published: 12 July, 2012
by DAN CARRIER
The Giants
Directed by Bouli Lanners
Certificate: 12a
Rating: 4 Out Of 5 Stars
Just think: right now there are young people who are about to embark on a summer that will live with them for ever, a period when they first fell in love, ran free, and discovered something new about the world that changed them for ever.
This bizarre adventure tells the story of one such summer, but rather than be a glorious memory, it’s a down-and-dirty version of what happens when young adolescent boys are left to their own devices.
We meet Zak (Zacharie Chasseriaud) and Seth (Martin Nissen), two brothers whose absent and rather slack mother has gone away for the summer. She has left them in their dead grandfather’s cottage in the middle of an insect-filled, hazy summer atmosphere. They are used to her fly-by-night behaviour and have fended for themselves before.
But this time it is different, as they meet teenage drifter Danny (Paul Bartel), and he persuades them that the freedoms they have hoisted upon them should be seen as an advantage.
They then embark on a series of extraordinary debacles including renting out their house to a horrible slimy drug dealer called Boeuf, and selling the entire contents of the house.
There is a strange vein of humour running through this tale of abandonment, and it is far from a sugary take on an adolescent summer.
This is no Stand By Me, rather a Swallows and Amazons adventure for a lost generation.
While its low budget occasionally lets it down, above all this is a well-observed and original offering.