SYNOPSIS: Based on a true story, two young brothers, Martin and Simon, are deeply at odds with the world and perpetually in trouble with the authorities.  The pair terrorize and vandalize their hometown, while the helpless adults look on.  Against all attempts by police and reformatories to separate them, the brothers have an irrevocable bond and an uncanny sense of how to find each other.

EDITORIAL REVIEW:  This film is filled with references to Truffaut's 400 blows.  The subject content and particularly certain scenes are a dedication to that film.  There is a scene with the older of the two brothers, Martin, escaping from a juvenile detention centre, which is almost an exact replica of 400 Blows. Also a scene where Martin is being interviewed by a psychologist and the camera shot is placed on him for the entire interview.  At first I thought that this was a good thing.  It seemed that the director, Agnès Merlet, was trying to depict how the French family of today is much worse off than it was in the 1960's.  It could be, as the Catholic Church saw it with 400 Blows, a call for the restoration of tradition family values. This interpretation of the film seemed plausible to me at first.  I soon began to wonder if Merlet was trying to say something altogether different than 400 Blows, or if she was for the Communist Party's interpretation of that film. Things got more complicated when I found out about The Songs of Maldoror.

Throughout the entire movie Martin is either reading or quoting from The Songs of Maldoror. I actually discovered this by accident and was quite disturbed by what I had found.  The Songs of Maldoror was written by 23-year-old Isidore Ducasse under the pen name of Comte de Lautreamont in the late 19th century.  It "is not a book" one reviewer said, "it is a searing, rambling, poisonous derangement of all the senses in masquerade.  After more than a century it still has the power to shock, startle and repulse."  Isidore, who died shortly after writing the book, saw himself as the main character of the book, Maldoror. "Maldoror is a sadist, a murderer, a philosopher, and an outcast from the normal order of life. He encourages readers to kidnap a child and torture it, to taste its tears and its blood; all within the first 30 pages of the book."  I cannot help but wonder why Merlet had the main character of her story be obsessed with this book. Was Martin supposed to be Maldoror?  Was she trying to say that this mindless and grotesque "literature" was causing the boy in the film to act so outlandishly, possibly even pushing him over the edge into insanity?  Or does she agree with Ducasse that there is no meaning to anything and despise God who he calls the "creator of all this human stupidity and vice."

"Me, if that had been able to depend on my will, I would have liked to be rather the son of the female of the shark, whose hunger is friendly storms, and tiger, with recognized cruelty: I would not be so malicious." This is the quote from Maldoror many times repeated by the boy in the film.  We get a possible explanation as to why this boy is so absorbed in this book.  His mother, who left the boys and there abusive father years ago, gave the book too him.  This would seem a plausible explanation for why he was so attached to this book.  Although, this may not be what Merlet is saying because the boy tells us through narration that the day their mother left his brother "broke all the plates in the house and quit school for good."  You come away with the impression that this boy does not really care too much for his runaway mother, even though he does hallucinate seeing her in his recently abandoned house.

Towards the beginning of the film, Simon, Martin's younger brother and partner in crime, asks Martin, "what you have to do to become an angel?" Martin responds, "forget everything and disappear." Martin probably gained this knowledge from his book in which "a church lantern turns into an angel, deteriorates into pus when Maldoror licks its face, and is soon only an enormous loathsome wound." What is even more disturbing is that the film ends with a long close up on the boys' faces only to have them suddenly disappear.  Are we to believe that the book was true and that these boys did turn into angels?  If so, does this mean that Merlet believes the book is true and "takes it as her bible" as so many obsessed fans of this book do?  Or, is this just a cinematic technique to show us that the boys are "disappearing" from their present situation and departing on a long journey on a fishing boat?

I racked my brain trying to understand what Merlet was trying to tell us with Son of the Shark. I sat for hours going back and forth with possible explanations and clues to what she was trying to say. In the end, I have a suspicion that she really does not want anyone to know what she was saying, or at least does not care. (editorial by James, thanks James, I agree with your last sentence)

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STARRING: Ludovic Vandendaele, Eric Da Silva, Sandrine Blancke, Maxime Leroux.
DIRECTOR: Agnes Merlet.
AVAILABILITY: In stock! Ships within one business day.
LENGTH: 90 minutes.
LANGUAGE: French, with ENGLISH SUBTITLES.
SPECIAL FEATURES: 1.33:1 (4:3 Full Screen); Mono audio; 1 disc; Uncut.
VIEWER DISCRETION: Brief nudity, violence, coarse language.
PICTURE QUALITY: Good picture quality. (what's this mean?)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: France (1993).
ALSO KNOWN AS: Le fils du Requin.
DATE ADDED TO OUR LIBRARY:  February 13, 2009.
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