Olivier, Olivier

In the French countryside, nine-year-old Olivier disappears on his way to his grandmother's house. The family comes apart: the father goes to Africa, the mother collapses, the sister turns inward. Years later a policeman in Paris believes he recognises the missing boy in a young man living on the street, and brings him home. The film is not interested in whether it really is him. It is interested in the family needing it to be: the mother asks nothing, because asking would mean losing her son a second time. The doubt is left with the audience. The form is calm and realist: a country house, fields, ordinary meals. The tension comes not from raised voices but from the questions nobody asks. The story comes from a real case: Agnieszka Holland took the idea from an item in the French press in the early eighties. The film competed at the 49th Venice Film Festival and won a prize at Valladolid in 1992. François Cluzet plays the father, Grégoire Colin the young man who returns and Marina Golovine the sister. Who it is for: viewers who like European drama built on identity and family. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a clear answer. Even at the end the film does not explain everything and some elements stay deliberately vague.