Le Royaume

It’s not often that you get a plausible gangster movie told from the perspective of a fifteen year old girl, but here Ghjuvanna Benedetti delivers a really personable performance as the young “Lesia”. She lives on Corsica with her aunt, has a boyfriend and leads a fairly normal teenager’s life. That is, until she is summoned to meet her dad in a luxury villa. Once she arrives, it becomes clear that she and “Pierre-Paul” (Saveriu Santucci) are fairly close and that much of their distance in their relationship is necessitated by the fact that he is the local “Don”. Along with a few loyal family retainers whom she has known since ever she could remember, she soon finds herself embroiled in an all-out turf war that she chooses to remain and help out with rather than flee to safety elsewhere. With the bullets flying, their home is soon no longer much of a sanctuary and they must resort to their more innate survival skills - and “Lesia” is no slouch when it comes to defence becoming offence! The vast majority of the cast here are not professional actors and that lends a legitimacy to the whole look of the film as the vendetta takes shape and the violence escalates testing both the emotional and physical prowess of both father and daughter. Against a backdrop of this beautiful mountainous island, there is a welcome paucity of dialogue that works well as it allows us to immerse ourselves more in the powerful visuals depicting family loyalty, trust and inter-reliance - even starting at a relatively young age. As coming of age films go, this takes an unique approach and there’s a solid chemistry between the two leads that I felt cemented this quite gripping thriller for the best part of two hours.