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France, Belgium · 2016
1h 55m
Director Eugène Green
Starring Victor Ezenfis, Natacha Régnier, Fabrizio Rongione, Mathieu Amalric
Genre Comedy, Drama
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Vincent, a young, resentful man, heads off to look for a father he never knew. Who he finds is a cynical, sophisticated man who works as a publisher in Paris. Overwhelmed with emotion, Vincent threatens his father --- yet a powerful vision redirects his course...
Eugène Green’s (The Portuguese Nun) direction favours symmetry over emotion, while the impassive performance style recalls French auteur Robert Bresson. It lacks the profundity to fully merit that comparison, but earns its uplifting ending.
The Son of Joseph is nothing short of marvelous. A modernised tale of literal Biblical proportions that will make viewers reconsider what defines paternity, family, and their place in the world. But don't worry: that's a good thing.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
The constant combination of highbrow and lowbrow elements is undeniably French but also very effective.
The insistence of Green’s gaze throughout the film encourages us to look beyond the mechanisms of speech and behavior at the more uncanny movements of the conscience.
Screen International by Dan Fainaru
Open-minded audiences will discover a surprisingly refreshing, smart, intelligent and often entertaining, tongue-in-cheek take on the nature of family bonds, using references from the Old and the New Testament, with modern characters nicely fitting the mythical moulds without suspecting there is anything even remotely symbolical or divine about their existence.
In Green’s world, every moment is an unsolvable mystery that requires debate.
No one behaves quite like a human being in Eugene Green’s Le Fils de Joseph, yet a soulful sense of humanity emerges from their heightened declamations anyway.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
The Portuguese Nun (2009) was a gem of gentle comedy, and his new drama, The Son of Joseph, has the same droll innocence and lovability. With its carefully controlled, decelerated dialogue, it is weirdly moving in just the same way.
The New Yorker by Richard Brody
This arch, bold, and tender transposition of elements of the Nativity to the cramped secular life of a high-school student in current-day Paris is as much of an emotional wonder as a conceptual one.
Time Out London by Trevor Johnston
The tone careens from high seriousness to easy parody in a way that makes the film slightly imprecise and slippery. Still, nothing else quite like it out there, that’s for sure.
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