Customer Reviews

Une minute de silence

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Florent Emilio Siri's film shows a lot of promise and just about manages to sustain interest for it's brief running time, but never seems to get anywhere. Set against a poorly defined impending strike (it is only virtually at the end of the film that we discover it is to save what is described as the last working coal mine in France) and hindered by some confusingly ill-defined family relationships, it follows a couple of young miners tied by their heritage to an industry with no future. They fill in their aimless lives out of the pit with drinking, whoring and bickering, one of them flirting with an apprenticeship with a slick but sleazy German human trafficker-cum-businessman (yet another ill-defined character). When violence finally erupts on the picket line, the two friends have to choose sides: no prizes for guessing the outcome.

While infinitely more cinematic than the equivalent "it's Grim up North" British neo-kitchen sinkers, there's a purposelessness to the film that denies it any real power. It strikes all the right attitudes, but also makes the mistake (for international audiences) of assuming a high level of awareness of the national importance of the real events: without it, the climax seems more contrived than cathartic - less the end of a way in life in a torrent of batons and rubber bullets, more an attempt to bring its characters to a moment of decision that, sadly, has too little resonance for an audience. Well shot, well scored and well intentioned, Une Minute de Silence sadly never lives up to its promise.

The French PAL Region 2 DVD offers a good 1.85:1 widescreen transfer with English subtitles, unsubtitled audio commentary by Siri and similarly unsubtitled 30-minute documentary Gluck Auf!, trailer and an isolated playlist of Alexandre Desplat's fine score.