In the heat of the Corsican summer, Lesia has no time to laze around. Filmed in a tight shot, the young girl casts worried glances at the joyful agitation that reigns in this sun-baked meadow. Suddenly there is silence. Everyone surrounds the teenager who then begins to butcher a freshly hunted wild boar… Congratulated by those close to her, she swallows her disgust. Everything is said in this introductory scene of Julien Colonna’s film, on the weight of the rites weighing on the frail shoulders of Lesia, heir to a kingdom which she does not seem to want.
This kingdom is that of her father, Pierre-Paul, whom she sees little. When you are a clan leader, you remain discreet. Especially when his loved ones are targeted by shots. War is brewing and the king of Corsica is forced to hide with his close guard. Lesia makes herself small to spy on this circle of virile men. At first bored, she is gradually intoxicated by the scent of secrecy that exudes from the meetings and ends up finding her place among these warlords.
Complicit glances and silences
Paradoxically, the most moving phase of the film begins. Abandoning the criminal intrigue, the film focuses on the relationship between father and daughter. Disguised as summer campers to go unnoticed, they observe each other, get to know each other, even create holiday memories at the water’s edge, surrounded by lush nature with exuberant beauty.
Directing his actors wonderfully, most of them amateurs but larger than life, Julien Colonna, for whom this is his first feature film, deploys a staging on the edge, between the tenderness of this relationship and the violence of the regulations of accounts. The games of glances and the complicit silences between Saveriu Santucci, a colossus with a disturbing gentleness, and Ghjuvanna Benedetti, a woman-child with a singular voice, are interrupted by the scenes of the run and executions.
Everything seems authentic in this film very well written by the filmmaker, in collaboration with the talented Jeanne Herry (director of Pupil And I will always see your faces), because everything falls into place naturally and in small steps. Including the transmission of the virus of violence which unleashes the inexorable cycle of revenge. There is definitely something rotten in this kingdom…