![\"sonofjoseph-a\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2016\/02\/sonofjoseph-a.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI\u2019m not all that familiar with Eug\u00e8ne Green, a French filmmaker who was born in New York, but apparently his films \u2014 such as La Sapienza<\/i> and The Portuguese Nun<\/i> \u2014 often dip into religious themes. His newest film The Son of Joseph<\/i>, which premiered at the Berlin film festival<\/a> over the weekend, is apparently no different.<\/p>\n The film concerns a teenager raised by a woman named Marie, who goes looking for his birth father and ends up finding a sort of surrogate parent in a man named Joseph. And there is reportedly lots of other religious symbolism in the film besides.<\/p>\n Boyd van Hoeij of The Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/i> writes:<\/p>\n Lighter than most of Green\u2019s other work, with more clearly emphasized scenes of satire and a more playful sense of storytelling, this could very well travel further afield than Green\u2019s more cerebral efforts, even though there\u2019s no sense in any way that the director has compromised his vision to reach a (slightly) broader audience. The fact this was co-produced by the Dardenne brothers can only help. . . .<\/p>\n The Son of Joseph<\/i> might be filled with talk about and visual allusions to God, Biblical art, life, parenthood, filialness and relationships but the way the material is handled is jocular without betraying the more serious ideas at its core. There\u2019s a reason the two main adult characters are called Joseph and Marie, and Green gently plays around with the expectations of the viewers. Something similar applies to the film\u2019s division in Biblically inspired chapters, with names such as The Sacrifice of Abraham, The Flight to Egypt and The Golden Calf (the latter the feature\u2019s most out-and-out comic setpiece involving a satirical look at the ridiculously self-obsessed publishing world, with a cameo by Maria de Medeiros as a crackpot literary critic). The constant combination of highbrow and lowbrow elements is undeniably French but also very effective.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And Guy Lodge at Variety<\/a><\/i> writes:<\/p>\n This is Green\u2019s first team-up with producers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose increasingly catholic arthouse portfolio also includes this year\u2019s Berlin competish title \u201cHedi.\u201d \u201cCatholic\u201d may indeed be an operative word in this newly forged collaboration: The faith\u2019s very structured principles of morality inform Green\u2019s artifice-driven vision as playfully as they do, to rather more sober effect, the Belgian brothers\u2019 contrastingly social-realist studies in human kindness and weakness. \u201cLe Fils de Joseph\u201d \u2014 a title that translates as \u201cSon of Joseph,\u201d about which we can draw our own Christian conclusions \u2014 has little time for sermonizing in its religious observations. Indeed, when Raphael O\u2019Byrne\u2019s camera does eventually enter a church, it\u2019s merely to appreciate the finery \u2014 and the madrigal music, courtesy of famed ensemble Le Poeme Harmonique, whose reinterpretations of 16th- and 17th-century compositions by Mazzocchi, de\u2019 Cavalieri and Otradovic lend the film on otherworldly lilt from the opening credits onwards. . . .<\/p>\n [The film\u2019s] open-hearted appreciation of the surrounding world is not initially shared by its protagonist Vincent (Victor Ezenfis, making a notable big-screen debut), a sullen high-schooler whose anguish over his unknown paternity is routinely taken out on his saintly, endless forbearing single mother Marie (Natacha Regnier). Hostile and regarded with indifference even by his supposed friends \u2014 one of whom, in a thematically salient running gag, is attempting to run a private sperm bank \u2014 Vincent spends much of his time in his spartan room, staring a little too intently at a forbidding print of Caravaggio\u2019s \u201cThe Sacrifice of Isaac.\u201d (The painting also provides the title for the third of the film\u2019s five chapters; others, varying in degree of cryptic Biblical significance, include \u201cThe Sacrifice of Abraham,\u201d \u201cThe Golden Calf,\u201d \u201cThe Carpenter\u201d and \u201cThe Flight Into Egypt.\u201d)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Marie, incidentally, is played by Natacha R\u00e9gnier, who shared the Best Actress prize at Cannes in 1998 with her co-star \u00c9lodie Bouchez for The Dreamlife of Angels<\/a><\/i>. I haven\u2019t seen that film in years, but it was a hugely important film to me at the time.<\/p>\n I look forward to seeing this new one. I\u2019ll link to more reviews later if I find any.<\/p>\n February 17 update:<\/b> Alissa Wilkinson at Christianity Today<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n Vincent is the kind of kid who has a massive print of Caravaggio\u2019s The Sacrifice of Isaac<\/i> on the wall in his bedroom. We only find this out after discovering that the film is divided into chapters: \u201cThe Sacrifice of Abraham,\u201d \u201cThe Golden Calf,\u201d \u201cThe Sacrifice of Isaac,\u201d \u201cThe Carpenter,\u201d and \u201cThe Flight into Egypt.\u201d Caravaggio pops up in the first chapter, and the final chapter has the most obvious allusions to the Bible: by the end of it (not to really give anything away) we have our Holy Family, complete with donkey, the \u201cvirgin\u201d dressed in the traditional blue used in paintings of Mary for centuries, fleeing danger for the shore.<\/p>\n And yet the whole thing is sort of like a Bible Remix Lite. It\u2019s reasonable to assume that Biblical patriarchs, for instance, might lose track of how many children they have. Joseph and Vincent have several conversations about how you know God is speaking to you, and how Joseph (in the Bible) chose to become Jesus\u2019 father. Vincent makes one key choice based on what he believes an angel told him. There are more paintings, more allusions throughout\u2014and yet it\u2019s not an allegory. Don\u2019t go trying to find the key to the film in a Bible story. A lot of the film\u2019s fun comes from just seeing those motifs pop up, like jokes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n David Gonz\u00e1lez at Cineuropa<\/a>:<\/p>\n It is this irreverent, absurd and intellectualised brand of humour, bristling with metaphors and meaning, that Green clearly masters, as if he were following in the recent footsteps of another highly philosophical French auteur, Bruno Dumont, in search of a result that is as rich as it is unique.<\/p>\n Because of course, we see all of this following Green\u2019s decision to turn his characters into mere instruments, forced to recite their dialogue without any kind of expression, almost as if it were a study on how not to act. True to himself, the director continues to get the most out of his characteristic hieratic style, which is complemented extremely well by a more comical approach, in contrast with his other, more serious films.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n David Hudson at Keyframe Daily<\/a> also likes the film, calling it: \u201cJust lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n