The reason I like to know as little as possible about a movie before I see it (I actually try not to see preview trailers) is to preserve the sense of discovery. There’s nothing like being truly shocked at a movie revelation.
I knew almost nothing about “Les Cowboys” when I saw it. One of this year’s French films at the Seattle International Film Festival, all I knew was that it had a funny title.
The first few minutes drop us into an unexpected group: French people who love American country-and-western culture. It’s like cosplay, but with ten-gallon hats.
We focus on one family, as the father, Alain (Francois Damiens), gets up and croons — with a heavy accent — “The Tennessee Waltz” at a big outdoor picnic. He dances with his 16-year-old daughter, the apple of his eye.
Will this be a comedy about culture clash? As it turns out, no. By the end of the day, the daughter has disappeared. Alain learns that she has run off with her fundamentalist Muslim boyfriend.
“Les Cowboys” begins in the mid-1990s, and spans 15 years across different parts of the world. Alain becomes obsessed with finding his daughter, and he drags along his son Georges (played as an adult by Finnegan Oldfield) for the journey.
Georges — nicknamed, in true Western-movie fashion, Kid — is just as determined as his father. But he has a sense of perspective; at one point he muses that without the hunt for his sister, their lives might not have any purpose at all. The search is everything.
Fans of Westerns will recognize the outline of one of the mightiest of all American films, “The Searchers,” in this plotline. What’s remarkable about “Les Cowboys” is that it doesn’t just pay homage to that 1956 classic, it adapts the general theme for a completely new setting: Europe in the age of terror.
The film is the directing debut of Thomas Bidegain, who co-wrote the brilliant “A Prophet.” It’s full of strong moments and good acting, including a wily turn by John C. Reilly as an American doing mysterious business in the Middle East.
“Les Cowboys” is a surprise — and a real journey. By the time it rides off into the sunset, you’ll feel like you’ve been somewhere.
“Les Cowboys” 3 1/2 stars
A teenage girl runs away with her Muslim boyfriend in the mid-1990s—a disappearance that provokes her father and brother to a years-long search. The directing debut by Thomas Bidegain (screenwriter of “A Prophet”) is genuinely surprising, a Western re-imagined for the age of terror. In French, with English subtitles.
Rating: R, for violence
Showing: Guild 45th theater
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