Review: 'The Giants', directed by Bouli Lanners

In a world full of coming-of-age stories, a unique take on an overused theme is refreshing. Unfortunately for The Giants (Les Géants in French), the coming-of-age story lacks any kind of finesse and fails to deliver any sort of entertainment or character development.

In France, Zak (Zacharie Chasseriaud) and his brother Seth (Martin Nissen) are living alone in their dead grandfather’s house. The summer has come and their mother has abandoned them to go off to some unknown place and only calls them twice in the entire film. Their friend Danny (Paul Bartel), whose abusive siblings he runs away from, convinces the brothers to rent out their grandfather’s house in order to earn some cash. But after that goes wrong, the boys are stuck squatting in an occupied house, bleach their hair for fun (which is probably the most entertaining part of the film), and briefly wind up on the receiving end of a woman’s kindness.

The film uses music sparingly to set the mood for certain scenes, but director Bouli Lanners takes the opportunity to deafen the audience with silence instead of using a lot of dialogue. And while that can be a good thing in some instances, it doesn't work for this film simply because there isn't enough character development or back story to really give the silence an emotional weight.

The only standout performance comes from Zacharie Chasseriaud, whose portrayal is more layered and emotional than his costars. He’s the character who constantly asks “what do we do now?” after every event that blows up in their faces. He’s the grounding point and the most realistic. Everyone else is rather bland and no matter what the boys go through, you can’t summon up enough sympathy to care much about their trials and tribulations. There’s just too little going on and not enough focus on why it’s happening or the emotional state of the characters.

In comparison to other coming-of-age stories such as the recent film The Kings of Summer, The Giants doesn't even reach a true climax, instead hitting a few bumps in a road that’s mostly lifeless and not inspiring in the least. Lanners takes the concept of an intriguing semi road trip movie and turns it into a tiresome shadow of what could have been.

There is no passion behind the story and no way to keep the audience intrigued because of its lack of imagination and inactivity. It almost seems like Lanners doesn't know the direction he wanted to take with the film and so it bounces back and forth between different paths but never finds its own course. The film is unremarkable and extremely hard to sit through. 

The Giants starts out flat and never quite gains any momentum. Lanners focuses a lot on outdoor scenery shots while ignoring any kind of character and plot development. And while those shots are beautiful, they don’t distract enough from the pitfalls of the story and pacing issues the film has. The truth is The Giants is relatively boring, stale, and slow-going even though the run time doesn't even reach 90 minutes.