Le Ring

Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette

Canada

• Save
• Share

Synopsis

Glimpses into the lives of a painter and two dancers living in Philadelphia reveal secrets-in-the-making as the characters search for identity in sex, art, the city, and each other. 

Review

They are flamboyant and fantastic, strong and wild. They are wrestlers with names like Firestorm and Satan, fearless performers who inspire fear in most...and awe in twelve-year-old Jessy, the central character of "Le Ring".

Directed with realism by Anais Barbeau-Lavalette, this insightful drama acquires much of its power from the truthful and disarming performance of Maxime Desjardins-Tremblay as Jessy. Set in a poor neighborhood in Montreal, it reveals young Jessy caught in a vise between rough-and-tumble incitements of the street and a tattered family life. 

His father (Stephane Demers), an abusive, petty crook and his mother (Suzanne Lemoine), an aloof drug addict, are fully realized in economic performances keyed to highly cinematic vignettes. There is the mother staring out the window, nervously fingering a cigarette, more attuned to nurturing her habit than Jessy...and the father, distant in the street below, on his way to God-knows-where, as Jessy hangs out the window yelling that he is hungry. 

It is only at Le Ring that the boy finds escape from his grim reality. Captivated by the flamboyant antics of the wrestlers, Jessy cheers and boos and shouts curses at them.  It is here that he also finds what is lacking elsewhere in young life: inspiration.

This is not about wrestling so much as Jessy's pluck and hopeless ambition to become a professional wrestler. On his own Jessy prowls the streets, forages for food, and earns an extra buck or two by shoplifting and collecting bottles. Along the way he befriends Max, a homeless, middle-aged man, who evolves into an unlikely but important role model.

From the tarnished alleys and back roads of Montreal to the knock-down, drag out charisma of the wrestling arena, from hopeful Jessy to his wayward siblings and lost parents, to embittered but wise Max, "Le Ring" resounds with the ring of truth in direction, performance, and camerawork.

-Jeffrey Gorney