35 Shots of Rum

Composite Score: 82

Starring: Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Nicole Dogué, Grégoire Colin, Jean-Christophe Folly, and Mario Canonge

Director: Claire Denis

Writers: Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau

Genres: Drama, Romance

MPAA Rating: Unrated

Box Office: $973,539 worldwide

Why should you Watch This Film?

                35 Shots of Rum is Claire Denis’s film about a lower-class father and daughter who live and work in Paris and the unique family dynamics that they experience as both of them grow older. The French film features some excellent cinematography, quality acting, and a poignant exploration of familial relationships. The ties between Lionel and Joséphine and the other people in their lives feel incredibly real and lived-in and provide the audience a legitimate connection to the characters on the screen.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                Denis’s film makes a mistake that I have seen in a few other films, and especially from the French: It takes its audience for granted. This is a film that assumes you want to watch it and, so, does very little to hook you. On the one hand, its intro is beautiful with no dialogue for almost ten minutes of screen time, which is a phenomenal hook. At the same time, once the dialogue does start, there is very little to get the audience invested in the characters’ stories. There is no real mystery and very little drama until the film’s back half, which easily becomes frustrating when you don’t come into the film looking for a “slice of life”. There is only minimal emotional set-up for the film’s conclusion.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                As frustratingly mundane as the film is, its quiet reality allows the audience to explore their own familial relationships, both found and actual, in the process. The relationship between Lionel and Joséphine is a classic father-daughter relationship with the added complications of a deceased mother and both of their increasing ages. There is this interplay of the characters’ needs for one another for companionship and survival and their need for companionship outside of each other. Both struggle at first to connect with those around them due to their hesitancy to decrease their involvement in the other’s life. For Joséphine, she wants romance but fears that such a relationship will take her away from the father that she has cared so much for since her mother’s death. For Lionel, he needs companionship from his peers but cannot help but keep them all at arm’s length due to a combination of his continued grief from the loss of his wife and his fear of losing his daughter as well. Ultimately, the pair learn over the course of the film how to healthily separate from one another while maintaining an active relationship as well, a goal that I’d say many viewers have in developing their relationships with their parents/children.

                35 Shots of Rum also succeeds in being a quality example of showing and not telling. So much is left up to the audience’s interpretation throughout the film. What is the nature of Joséphine’s and Noé’s relationship? How does Gabrielle fit into the equation? Why do Lionel and Joséphine travel to Germany? How does Lionel feel about Joséphine’s new relationship at the film’s end? All of these questions are asked, and to some extent answered in the visuals and dialogue of Denis’s film. However, the answers are not force-fed to the audience; rather, the audience is encouraged to dive deep into the film themselves and find those answers. Most are there for the attentive viewer, and even those that are not have potential answers that the audience can read into the film. It is a masterclass in the subtleties of storytelling that film offers.

                35 Shots of Rum benefits from Claire Denis’s subtle storytelling that invites the audience deeper into the story and from a story that is so honest and mundane as to be relatable to most audiences, making its place among the Greatest Films of All Time not much of a surprise. Though its slow pace and slice of life nature are certainly not for every viewer, the film rewards those who watch it closely and provides a potential for deeper discussion after it concludes. Check it out if you are interested, as it is certainly worth a watch.