Gamblers (Les Mauvais Joveurs) (Frederic Balekdigan, France, 2005, 85 Minutes)
Set in a multi-cultured Paris, following the exploits of first, second and third generations in the city, and paying homage strikingly to Martin Scorsese’s New York classic Mean Streets, Gamblers is an enjoyable tale charting the lives of the youngest generation of Lebanese and Chinese immigrants, as they beg, borrow and hustle in an attempt to negotiate a future within their tough surroundings. Accompanied by an excellent soundtrack of both new and old popular songs, and fast moving, hand held roaming direction which adds to the atmosphere of a music video, but happily manages to sustain most of the interest for its entirety, Gamblers is a creditable attempt at a modern version of such an ambitious film as Scorsese’s 1973 classic.
Central to the web of interweaving characters, most of whom start out as simple, one-dimensional stereotypes before undergoing varying degrees of transformation, is Vahe (Pascal Elbe), a petty crook with a heart of gold, who has had his heart ripped apart by his estranged girlfriend Lu Ann (the beautiful Lin Dan Pham) and refuses to get over it, explaining his sensitivity to his friends by surmising that ‘even if a teacher at school yelled at me, I’d start crying’. Lu Ann, for her part, is portrayed as a cold hearted bitch, choosing the comforting arms of a rich, smartly dressed businessman over the dark passion and enflamed love of the gambling, hustling, but devoted Vahe.
While Vahe and his friends work and con their way through the streets they know so well, always trying to get ahead, one big step further up the ladder are some Armenian gangsters they have to deal with, who effectively police the immigrants; granting unofficial citizenship and visas to whomever they deem fit, i.e. whoever can pay for it. One such character, hopelessly in debt and generally uninterested in working his way out of it, is Yuen (Teng Fei Xiang), a reckless but endearing youth who just so happens to be the brother of the sultry Lu Ann. Just as Vahe is Balekdigan’s Charlie, Yuen is quite obviously his Johnny Boy, and the fates of the two are intertwined. As Vahe is the centrepiece of the film and thus the focus of the viewers’ main attention, which is also testament to a very capable acting performance by Elbe, and since he sees Yuen as a disengaged but harmless kid, the viewer feels empathetic towards both.
Things begin to deteriorate when Yuen, who owes a great deal of money to the Armenian gangsters, continually skips work in order to spend time with his young love, who he intends to marry, start a family with, and live happily ever after. Through his love of the very young looking Yin do we see the best of Yuen; the romantically headstrong, fun loving kid caught in a world which offers him no opportunities and no consolation. As the parallel between the two characters continues, and as Vahe’s attempts to win back his own love continue to flounder, this charm which flows easily from Yeun also rubs off on his self-styled guardian, as if the younger man is to an extent depicting Vahe at that age, when he too felt ‘immortal’, long before he realised the world could be so cruel.
More than once at this stage Balekdigan quite deliberately cuts to the image of a goldfish bowl, perfectly encapsulating the sense of the characters being stuck in this small world of short memories and no escape. Just like Mean Streets, and like Mathieu Kassovitz’ La Haine (also heavily influenced by Scorsese) the stakes are heightened beyond any recovery when Yuen chooses to compensate for his youthfulness, his poverty, and his lack of power, by using a gun. After he is beaten, he shoots one of the gangsters, and the gamble, which was already far from a winning one, starts to go badly wrong for all concerned. As he sits in hiding with Yin, preparing to make their escape far away from the city, the gangsters catch up with him, and he is not seen again.
But for a brief sexual reunion with Lu Ann, which gives away far more of her true feelings for him than she would like him to realise, Vahe’s downward spiral never threatens to be anything but a collapse. Having avoided violence wherever possible throughout the story, even as all others around him often relied upon it, he now lashes out; dispensing his pent-up fury with the world in an attack on Lu Ann’s current boyfriend, and ending up received a beating himself in the process. By the time she discovers that she is pregnant, and Vahe presumably the father, he has shot and killed the leader of the Armenians. The past is behind him, the moral debt to an extent cleared, but just like Charlie in Mean Streets, there is an overwhelmingly sickening sense that the worst is yet to come.
This film is well acted, competently directed, and packed full of pop culture, from its enjoyable soundtrack to its fashionable look. It is neither as elegant as its many Parisian film predecessors, nor as gritty and thought provoking as the excellent La Haine, but it does work well within the boundaries it sets itself as a small time gangster film full of petty criminals seemingly unable to escape their fates. While it is perhaps unfortunate that the film sticks so closely to the Scorsese formula, and suffers in comparison as a result, it is certainly one of the most successful attempts to make such a film in recent years, and can to an extent stand up in its own right as an enjoyable and thoroughly well put together, if by no means innovative film.
Review by Alex McMillan
Central to the web of interweaving characters, most of whom start out as simple, one-dimensional stereotypes before undergoing varying degrees of transformation, is Vahe (Pascal Elbe), a petty crook with a heart of gold, who has had his heart ripped apart by his estranged girlfriend Lu Ann (the beautiful Lin Dan Pham) and refuses to get over it, explaining his sensitivity to his friends by surmising that ‘even if a teacher at school yelled at me, I’d start crying’. Lu Ann, for her part, is portrayed as a cold hearted bitch, choosing the comforting arms of a rich, smartly dressed businessman over the dark passion and enflamed love of the gambling, hustling, but devoted Vahe.
While Vahe and his friends work and con their way through the streets they know so well, always trying to get ahead, one big step further up the ladder are some Armenian gangsters they have to deal with, who effectively police the immigrants; granting unofficial citizenship and visas to whomever they deem fit, i.e. whoever can pay for it. One such character, hopelessly in debt and generally uninterested in working his way out of it, is Yuen (Teng Fei Xiang), a reckless but endearing youth who just so happens to be the brother of the sultry Lu Ann. Just as Vahe is Balekdigan’s Charlie, Yuen is quite obviously his Johnny Boy, and the fates of the two are intertwined. As Vahe is the centrepiece of the film and thus the focus of the viewers’ main attention, which is also testament to a very capable acting performance by Elbe, and since he sees Yuen as a disengaged but harmless kid, the viewer feels empathetic towards both.
Things begin to deteriorate when Yuen, who owes a great deal of money to the Armenian gangsters, continually skips work in order to spend time with his young love, who he intends to marry, start a family with, and live happily ever after. Through his love of the very young looking Yin do we see the best of Yuen; the romantically headstrong, fun loving kid caught in a world which offers him no opportunities and no consolation. As the parallel between the two characters continues, and as Vahe’s attempts to win back his own love continue to flounder, this charm which flows easily from Yeun also rubs off on his self-styled guardian, as if the younger man is to an extent depicting Vahe at that age, when he too felt ‘immortal’, long before he realised the world could be so cruel.
More than once at this stage Balekdigan quite deliberately cuts to the image of a goldfish bowl, perfectly encapsulating the sense of the characters being stuck in this small world of short memories and no escape. Just like Mean Streets, and like Mathieu Kassovitz’ La Haine (also heavily influenced by Scorsese) the stakes are heightened beyond any recovery when Yuen chooses to compensate for his youthfulness, his poverty, and his lack of power, by using a gun. After he is beaten, he shoots one of the gangsters, and the gamble, which was already far from a winning one, starts to go badly wrong for all concerned. As he sits in hiding with Yin, preparing to make their escape far away from the city, the gangsters catch up with him, and he is not seen again.
But for a brief sexual reunion with Lu Ann, which gives away far more of her true feelings for him than she would like him to realise, Vahe’s downward spiral never threatens to be anything but a collapse. Having avoided violence wherever possible throughout the story, even as all others around him often relied upon it, he now lashes out; dispensing his pent-up fury with the world in an attack on Lu Ann’s current boyfriend, and ending up received a beating himself in the process. By the time she discovers that she is pregnant, and Vahe presumably the father, he has shot and killed the leader of the Armenians. The past is behind him, the moral debt to an extent cleared, but just like Charlie in Mean Streets, there is an overwhelmingly sickening sense that the worst is yet to come.
This film is well acted, competently directed, and packed full of pop culture, from its enjoyable soundtrack to its fashionable look. It is neither as elegant as its many Parisian film predecessors, nor as gritty and thought provoking as the excellent La Haine, but it does work well within the boundaries it sets itself as a small time gangster film full of petty criminals seemingly unable to escape their fates. While it is perhaps unfortunate that the film sticks so closely to the Scorsese formula, and suffers in comparison as a result, it is certainly one of the most successful attempts to make such a film in recent years, and can to an extent stand up in its own right as an enjoyable and thoroughly well put together, if by no means innovative film.
Review by Alex McMillan
posted by Barnaby at 9:07 PM
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