Inspired in equal measure by a New York Times article about child assassins in Colombia and the myth of the Pied Piper, Ariel Kleiman’s debut feature is a haunting, nonspecific fable about corrupt adults and impressionable children. Vincent Cassel is cult leader Gregori, a charismatic outsider and messianic father figure who has gathered around him a Manson-style family of women and children. For years, Gregori has groomed young Alexander (a revelatory performance from newcomer Jeremy Chabriel) to do his bidding. But when the more worldly 11-year-old Leo arrives, Alexander starts to question Gregori’s authority and the acts of violence which he has been raised to view as a little more than a game.
Co-written with long-time collaborator Sarah Cyngler, Kleiman’s Dogtooth-esque dark drama paints a weird and disturbing portrait of stolen innocence. Despite some very contemporary reverberations (child soldiery, trafficking and exploitation), the film pointedly avoids specifics of time and space. The nowhere land exteriors were shot in Georgia, the production is Australian, and the dialogue largely second-language English. Faux pop-hit contributions from the likes of Jarvis Cocker and Joseph Mount underpin some of the film’s most surreally unsettling sequences, with festive karaoke queasily highlighting Gregori’s fairytale manipulation of his wide-eyed young charges.
