The Lost Son
UK/France 1998
Reviewed by Richard Falcon
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Lombard, a French private detective, makes his living blackmailing unfaithful wives in London. Carlos, an old colleague from Lombard's days in the Paris narcotics bureau, has married into the rich Spitz family. Despite the antipathy of Carlos' wife Deborah, the family hires Lombard to find Deborah's missing brother Leon, a photographer. Lombard follows a lead to a house in Felixstowe, where Leon's lover Emily is in hiding with a traumatised young boy, Shiva, who has been abused by a paedophile ring. Emily gives Lombard a video which had fallen into Leon's hands showing the abuse. She tells him that the ring is led by "The Austrian".
Lombard contacts his old friend Nathalie, now a high-class hooker. Using her pimp's contacts, Lombard poses as a paedophile to meet some gangsters dealing child slaves. Paying the contacts £10,000 of Nathalie's cash, he is driven to a hotel where he is left alone with a little boy. Exploding with rage, Lombard wounds, tortures and kills one of the gangsters after discovering from him that The Austrian is named Friedman and lives in Mexico. After dropping the boy with Emily, Lombard finds Nathalie murdered. The Spitz family fires him.
Lombard flies to Mexico where he confronts Friedman only to be drugged and held prisoner. Friedman tells him Leon was murdered after uncovering the ring. Lombard escapes and kills Friedman. Back in London, Lombard reveals Emily's address to the Spitz family and waits in Felixstowe for the trap to be sprung. Carlos - the leader of the ring and himself a paedophile - arrives to kill him. The abused boy shoots Carlos dead.
Review
In this surprisingly generic third feature by director Chris Menges, Daniel Auteuil's detective is suitably world weary and beleaguered by backstory. His wife and child were murdered by a gangster, making him sensitive to the suffering of children. Former cinematographer Menges shares his empathy. His prize-winning A World Apart successfully anatomised the evils of apartheid through its young heroine, while Second Best gave us an affecting psychodrama about troubled childhood. However, in The Lost Son the children - Shiva, locked away in a traumatised protective custody and Boy Number 6 - are silenced and abused, the objects of commercial sexual exploitation and the spur for Auteuil's redemptive wrath. Only one moment, when the two boys meet and are seen fleetingly striking up a tentative friendship, creates them as characters rather than pawns in a lurid crime fantasy. The Lost Son is scrupulous in its presentation of their abuse - invoking it visually only through the tape watched by Auteuil and the sex aids in the soundproofed hotel room. However, it's difficult not to feel that subjecting this most emotive of subjects to a by-numbers detective film and star vehicle is in itself a dubious business.
This is largely the fault of the script, which launches into its dismaying revelations about the paedophile ring very early on with Katrin Cartlidge's Emily (one of three thankless female roles here) screaming at Lombard, "Yeah, sex with kids!" to explain what he's dealing with. Unlike classic noir which uses degradation and perversion to mirror and reveal a world of institutionalised corruption, The Lost Son looks very thin on either subtext or wider perspective. What you see is what you get - which is Daniel kicking the asses of a bunch of evil child-slavers.
At least Lombard's impersonation of a punter to gain access to the ring generates dread and suspense as one of the tapas-munching villains elaborates on what Lombard can expect from the "puppies". ("If your puppy should get ill or die," Lombard is told, "we provide a full after-sales service.") In the light of such unequivocal evil, Lombard's outbursts of righteous violence are undeniably cathartic, but the plot's one-dimensionality makes The Lost Son little more than a humourless action movie. This conclusion is unavoidable when after learning that the children are being farmed in "places where life is cheap," Lombard flies to Mexico to take on the operation single-handed. The change of scenery after a blandly observed, neon-lit Soho is welcome but pretty pointless. When Auteuil searches Leon's studio he discovers a video of Peeping Tom. No one, however, will be making a pilgrimage to Soho to seek out the locations of The Lost Son.
Credits
- Producer
- Finola Dwyer
- Screenplay
- Eric Leclere
- Margaret Leclere
- Mark Mills
- Director of Photography
- Barry Ackroyd
- Editors
- Pamela Power
- Luc Barnier
- Production Designer
- John Beard
- Music
- Goran Bregovic
- ©Scala (Lost Son) Ltd/Ima Films SA
- Production Companies
- The Film Consortium/Le Studio Canal +/Scala and Ima Films present in association with The Arts Council of England/Film Four/Canal +/France 2 and France 3 a Scala/Ima production
- Developed with support of the Media Programme of the European Union
- Supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of England
- Executive Producers
- Nik Powell
- Stephen Woolley
- Georges Benayoun
- Sarah Radclyffe
- Line Producer
- Paul Cowan
- Co-producer
- Marina Gefter
- Associate Producer
- Judy Menges
- Development Executive
- Scala Productions:
- Rachel Wood
- Production Supervisor
- Tucson Unit:
- Aaron Budnik
- Production Co-ordinators
- Liz Watkins
- Tucson Unit:
- Christine Annigian
- Production Manager
- Chris Wheeldon
- Unit Manager
- David Brook
- Unit Production Manager
- Tucson Unit:
- John C. Thompson
- Location Managers
- David Kennaway
- Tucson Unit:
- Alan Benoit
- Post-production
- Consultant:
- Stephen Law
- Ima Films:
- Eric Bassoff
- Assistant Directors
- Stuart Renfrew
- William Booker
- Max Brown
- Tucson Unit:
- Margaret Knight
- Philip Lozevski
- Script Supervisor
- Penny Eyles
- Casting
- Vanessa Pereira
- Simone Ireland
- US Director:
- Randi Hiller
- Tucson Unit:
- Smith/Conklin Casting
- Camera Operators
- Mike Proudfoot
- Tucson Unit:
- Randy Feemster
- Steadicam Operators
- Alistair Rae
- Tucson Unit:
- Liz Ziegler
- Digital Visual Effects
- The Film Factory at VTR
- Special Effects
- Rob Hollow
- Supervising Art Director
- Ricky Eyres
- Art Directors
- Ray Chan
- France:
- Louise Marzaroli
- Set Decorators
- Niamh Coulter
- Tucson Unit:
- Helen Britten
- Art Collection of Deborah & Carlos
- Emma Sergeant
- Stills Photography for Leon's Apartment
- David Brook
- Costume Designer
- Rosie Hackett
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Tucson Unit:
- Bianca Garcia
- Make-up Designer
- Joël Lavau
- Make-up/Hair
- Designer:
- RoseAnn Samuel
- Tucson Unit:
- Marlene Lipman
- Maria Morales Pappes
- Titles Design
- The Creative Partnership
- Opticals
- General Screen Enterprises
- Sound Engineering/Programming
- Predrag Milanovic
- Djordje Jankovic
- Ognjan Radivojevic
- Music Consultant
- Bob Last
- Soundtrack
- "100% Pure Love" by Teddy Douglas, Jay Steinhour, Tommy Davis, Crystal Waters, performed by Crystal Waters; "Requiem" by Gabriel Fauré
- Sound Mixer
- Martin Trevis
- Re-recording Mixer
- Gérard Rousseau
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Campbell Askew
- Dialogue Editor
- Nick Lowe
- Foley
- Artists:
- Andie Derrick
- Peter Burgis
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Tom Delmar
- Tucson Unit:
- Terrance James
- Animal Wrangler
- Tucson Unit:
- Clint James
- Film Extract
- The Sleeping Beauty
(1954)- Cast
- Daniel Auteuil
- Xavier Lombard
- Nastassja Kinski
- Deborah
- Katrin Cartlidge
- Emily
- Ciaran Hinds
- Carlos
- Marianne Denicourt
- Nathalie
- Bruce Greenwood
- Friedman
- Billie Whitelaw
- Mrs Spitz
- Cyril Shaps
- Mr Spitz
- Jamie Harris
- Hopper
- Hermal Pandya
- Shiva
- Billy Smyth
- boy number 6
- Michael Liebmann
- Peter
- Cal MacAninch
- Martin
- Mark Benton
- giant
- Joe White
- barman
- Natalie Rogers
- Lombard's wife
- Charlotte Carew-Gibbs
- Lombard's daughter
- Gregory McFarnon
- Leon
- Marsha Fitzalan
- Mrs Carlton
- Will Welch
- lover
- Ray MacAllan
- Paul
- David Heyman
- Nathalie's pimp
- Christine Perez
- Nina
- Julio Garcia
- priest
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- United International Pictures (UK) Ltd
- 9,220 feet
- 102 minutes 27 seconds
- Dolby digital
- Colour by
- Technicolor UK