A Prophet

A Prophet – 2009, Jacques Audiard

Can you really go wrong with gritty French prison drama? Probably not. French cinema has been turning to France’s under-privileged ethnic population for stories for a few years now, but it’s not getting old. La Haine, Caché and now Un Prophete all take a different take on the French migrant underbelly; street urchins, foreign labour/xenophobia and organised crime respectively.

Without giving the plot away, the film follows the six year prison sentence of a young illiterate Arabian dude, Malik. He doesn’t want to pick a side in the prison yard, he wants to keep himself to himself, but that’s not how prison movies work. Inevitably he ends up being involved with/protected by a group of Corsican Mafia types. As time goes by Malik slowly, bravely and ingeniously becomes a player in French crime circles. Refreshingly it’s not a story about redemption.

The title refers to the spiritual and religious aura that seems to surround Malik. He’s very lucky and makes all the right moves. The whole ‘divine guidance’ thing seems a little forced, even though the director has obviously tried to do it subtly.

French prison life is depicted in all the filthy realism you’d expect. Real life ex-cons were cast as extras, and every member of the cast looks like they belong on the inside. The life of those involved in organised crime is exposed as being far from glamorous, and although other films have been showing us this fact for a while now (Gomorra in particular), A Prophet doesn’t suffer for it.

I don’t mean to say that the plot is predictable or clichéd, it certainly isn’t, but... ...there’s something about watching ‘a criminal play one group of criminals off against another in order to get one over everyone’ that seems very familiar. Maybe that’s just because I’ve spent so long watching The Shield and The Wire?

I saw the film without having seen a trailer first, which was good because the trailer gives too much away, this little clip doesn’t reveal too much; only that Malik looks a bit like the guy from Stereophonics crossed with Keanu Reeves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12SjQ5u7XtE