Hitherto best known for the excellent screenplays he wrote for several French auteurs, particularly Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone, Dheepan) and Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent), Thomas Bidegain makes his debut as director in his own right with this craftily elliptical, intimate epic. In the mid-1990s, a rural family of four enthusiastic country and western fans, who like all things to do with cowboy hats and line-dancing, are devastated when their daughter disappears one night at the local hoedown. Father Alain (François Damiens, touching) spends years searching for her, despite the fact that she seemingly doesn’t want to be found, having eloped with a Muslim boy who may or may not have jihadist sympathies. Kid, her younger brother (eventually played as an adult by a somewhat stiff Finnegan Oldfield), picks up the quest, ending up somewhere in Pakistan, where he meets John C Reilly’s shady adventurer. John Ford’s The Searchers, another story of an “abducted” child, is clearly meant to be a touchstone, but Bidegain cannily exploits and then subverts that connection, taking the story to unexpected places with twist after twist. Arnaud Potier’s widescreen cinematography embraces big-sky landscapes on two continents and the pained expressions of the brokenhearted with equal skill.
