Review: Partisan a world-class film debut from Aussie director Ariel Kleiman

REVIEW: THE provocative Partisan just might go down on record as one of the most significant directorial debuts we have seen in this country.

Partisan (MA15+)

Director: Ariel Kleiman (feature debut)

Starring: Vincent Cassel, Jeremy Chabriel, Florence Mazzara.

Rating: ****

This provocative, unsettling and eerily composed feature just might go down on record as one of the most significant directorial debuts we have seen in this country.

Time will tell on that front. However, right now, the unheralded arrival of Partisan establishes young Melbourne-based filmmaker Ariel Kleiman as a serious, world-class talent to be reckoned with.

Above and beyond ... Vincent Cassel gives a masterful performance in Partisan.

Though Partisan is indeed an Australian-made film, there is nothing remotely ‘local’ about its story, nor the unorthodox manner in which it is told.

The setting is an unnamed Eastern European country, a barren, bombed-out backwater which has seen its share of war, and is probably expecting more.

Inside a walled compound well away from any built-up area, a strange community has sprung up around a single charismatic leader.

Most of the residents are children. Not many of them are aged any older than 10. Some of their mothers also live in the enclave.

Cult of personality ... Vincent Cassel with Jeremy Chabriel in Partisan.

Nobody here makes a single move unless it is on the say-so of the only adult male on the premises, Gregori (a masterful Vincent Cassel).

Just how Gregori has gone about building such an intense and loyal cult of personality isn’t really hinted at during Partisan’s spellbinding first act.

All that can really be ascertained is that this cool, calm control freak is an expert at hand-picking and brainwashing recruits from a very early age. In some cases, he may have fathered them himself.

Why is not so important here as what Gregori has in mind for his unquestioning acolytes. It turns out that each and every child is being trained to help their leader exact some measure of revenge on the world outside the compound.

Innocents ... Vincent Cassel plays a brainwashing control freak.

Once in a while, seeming innocents such as 12-year-old Alexander (Jeremy Chabriel) make their way to an address of their master’s choosing. They pull a gun out of their backpack. They pull a trigger without hesitation.

Though any movie that features adolescent assassins leaves itself open to criticism on an exploitative front, Partisan is too well written and filmed to stray anywhere near the sensationalist.

After all, more than ever before, children are being used as easily programmable, tragically dispensable weapons of hate all over the world. This bestows Partisan with an immediacy and relevance many viewers will not have expected.

At turns riveting, worrying and soul-crushing, Partisan offers little respite from (but somehow finds much humanity in) an experience no one would wish on their fellow man.

Originally published as Review: Partisan a world-class film debut from Aussie director Ariel Kleiman