A Prophet

Audriard's latest picture, highly commended. It is fantastic, and it is an epic. Yes, it goes on for a number of weeks, but it just about (although, maybe, not quite) deserves the running time.
The characters, and setting, and developed and utterly true. No scenes are wasted, but that doesn't mean anything particularly happens for a lot. It would be wrong to say there is a gradual build up, as from the very off we have a sure sense of purpose about these characters as fully rounded, rather than them growing into a role. This sets out what is the best word to describe this entire film; confident. The characters and story are confidently assembled, it marches forwards with an unstoppable sincerity. The atmosphere is oppressive from the very off, and the alloances made beyond pure realism don't need to be justified; the film will do so itself.
This film is not very...hilly. This is not to say it is flat, but rather that it keeps its same tone throughout the piece. We don't realise ho gasping we are for breath, how almost literally we want to look up to the sun, until we are shocked at the difference when moments of the beach are snapped. Even the humour is not so much a break from the tone, but rather fits within the encompasssing structure and world of the film.
The non-realist scenes have there own beauty, not a transcendent beauty but rather a gritty, immanenet, peculiar one. They are beautiful in the same way billowing smoke is. The actors are not beautiful, though are, of course, brilliant painted. The performances of the leads are beyond impeccable; they are their character, just that.
To conclude, this is an epic masterpiece, which is slightly different from a masterpiece. If you kno, and are ready, to enter a dreary (not always negative world) where excitment runs at its own colour and we recognise that truth comes through puddles and grit, never to be wiped away and thus truly accessed, you will love it. A film to stay with you. And not only because the very last scene, the behind-the-back flick of the hand, is wonderful.