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Jun 21, 2016 By Stephen Mayne Web Exclusive

From Jean-Pierre Melville and the New Wave, to modern day practitioners like Jacques Audiard, French cinema has long been fascinated by Hollywood. Far from diluting national output, it’s led to a process where American films are consumed and regurgitated with a distinct Gallic flavor. This is relevant for Les Cowboys not only because Thomas Bidegain has written with Audiard for years (co-writer Noé Debré is also Audiard alumni) , but also because his excellent directing debut draws so heavily on The Searchers (1956).

Combining past and present gives Les Cowboys a sharp mix of social critique within an updated genre setting. Here it’s the western, transplanted from the arid deserts of America to the war on terror. Like John Wayne in The Searchers, cowboy obsessed Frenchman Alain Balland (François Damiens) finds his daughter Kelly (Iliana Zabeth) missing, sparking a search stretching across decades and continents. Unlike John Ford’s classic, Kelly isn’t taken by force, at least not in a clear-cut way. Falling in with Islamic boyfriend Ahmed (Mounir Margoum), she runs away and converts giving no warning until she’s left her devastated family.

Alain takes it hardest. He’s a man possessed, quickly launching his own search. Damiens is superb, helpless fear shining through every action. There are several standout moments when he loses control, but his real strength comes in placing Alain right on the line between obsession and breakdown. It’s a line he crosses as the film jumps forward in time to show his life in pieces. When Alain is spent, the mantle passes to his son Georges, played by Finnegan Oldfield who is equally brilliant in an understated way. The scope broadens substantially on his watch, transplanting the story to scarred post 9/11 battlefields.

In lesser hands, such contentious subject matter could have gone horribly wrong, tipping into racist stereotypes or overly earnest liberal platitudes. This only really happens twice, first when a minor character feels the need to openly state the plight immigrant families face, and later following a contrived prison rescue. The rest of the time, Bidegain isn’t so much interested in opposing cultural views as he is in showing what happens to people falling in-between worlds. As intimate an approach as this is, Les Cowboys remains connected to the bigger picture via the referencing of world events, providing context and a handy way of tracking time. Crowds gather to watch the World Trade Center collapsing on TV, while later news of the London bombings filters through.

Sometimes the film strives a little too hard to tie up western roots with a mostly unnecessary French cowboy sub-culture, and there are a few too many scenes of heightened drama. Mostly though, this is a painful, haunting work that ends on a note of powerful ambiguity. Les Cowboys shows how easily secure lives can spiral out of control, and how hard it is to emerge back from the descent.

cohenmedia.net/films/les-cowboys

Author rating: 8/10