Partisan Film Analysis

Partisan presents itself as Australian Ariel Kleiman’s feature-film directorial debut, though you wouldn’t realise it from the maturity displayed on screen. The narrative, rather than flimsily structured as some critics have purported, is sinisterly brooding and intentionally thin, giving the film a normality that adds effective contrast to the otherwise shocking subject matter. The subject matter in question revolves around Alexander, a misbehaving child played in a menacingly placid way by newcomer Jeremy Chabriel, and his unorthodox upbringing; trained to become a child assassin by his father, Gregori (Vincent Cassel), a deceivingly paternal figure with a strong partisan ideology.

The world is seen through Alexander’s eyes, and so many
The world-building is immediately captivating, and the story is developed at a pace that suppresses any temptation to reveal the film’s revelations too early. There’s an almost otherworldly, slightly mundane feel to the film that draws the viewer in – callous bombshells are juxtaposed almost immediately by stylistic karaoke – akin to Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives – though made all the more unsettling due to the connotations of innocence that the children
They’re raised and manipulated in a way that should seem sorrowful, but the film doesn’t probe deep enough into this topic, instead more interested in the face value of the events taking place. This disjointedness, or detachment from adversity is partly due to a script that is written in an occasionally stilted style. The film is understated in many respects, but its script is often wholly blunt and unnatural, where “show, don’t tell” is neglected. These moments are rare, but severely jarring, threatening to derail its intent of relaying information via the emotions of characters (close-ups of faces are used abundantly) and images of heavy