Irish Film Institute -No Rest for the Brave

No Rest for the Brave

Director: Alain Guiraudie

FRANCE-AUSTRIA| 2003. ENGLISH SUBTITLES. COLOUR. DOLBY DIGITAL STEREO. 107 MINUTES.


A coming-of-age film like no other you’ll have seen, No Rest for the Brave is the debut feature from Alain Guiraudie, already greatly acclaimed by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and Agnes Varda. The film follows the geographic and existential odyssey of Basile (Thomas Suire), a young man who wants to dream but who knows that if he ever falls asleep again he’ll die. During his journey he meets dozens of people, including Igor (Thomas Blanchard), a bored boy who does little to alleviate his state, and Johnny Got (Laurent Soffiati), a journalist-cum-detective with a penchant for sticking his nose into other people’s business.
No Rest for the Brave is also a thriller, an adventure story, an art film, a western, a film noir and a road movie. It mixes elements of French social realism
with neo-surrealism to show us France as a lost world composed of forgotten stretches of land made up of near deserted hamlets and desultory small towns (‘Living Village’, ‘Dying Village’, the signposts read). Wilfully fragmented and dreamlike at times, Guiraudie’s hugely imaginative approach still manages to tell us plenty about the dilemmas of growing up in a far from perfect world.

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