Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Partisan Blu-ray Movie Review

Léon: The Professional—the early years.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 10, 2015

There’s very little dialogue in the opening few moments of Partisan, an interesting film from Australian director Ariel Kleiman which initially seems like it might one of the many dystopian apocalpytic outings set Down Under that have appeared over the course of several decades (On the Beach, The Mad Max Anthology, Tank Girl, The Rover, These Final Hours, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead). A man who seems like he might be a Road Warrior type wanders through a dilapidated cityscape where he hoists what looks like an old telephone pole onto his shoulder in what seems to be a deliberate reference to Jesus' travails with the cross on Calvary. A brief montage shows the guy seemingly getting a location ready for something. Later he wanders through a grimy looking hospital where a slew of newborns is being transported from one room to another. This man wanders into a communal recovery center where he approaches a woman with a nasty facial injury and tells her he noticed she, unlike some of the other new mothers, doesn’t have flowers at her bedside table. The guy pulls out a wilted blossom from his pocket and places it in a glass on the nightstand, just as a nurse brings in this woman’s newborn, a beautiful little boy named Alexander. The flower wielding man caresses the baby’s cheek and mentions just how beautiful the little boy is. What exactly is going on?

Note: While virtually all online content even briefly discussing Partisan mentions the "surprise" that is in store for viewers, those who want to avoid any potential "spoilers" in the following summary of the film's plot are encouraged to skip to the technical aspects of the review, below.

The film then segues forward a decade or so, showing the now 10 year old Alexander (Jeremy Chabriel) about to celebrate his 11th birthday. Still, the film seems to be plying a traditional post-apocalyptic ambience, as the little boy runs through a seemngly deserted landscape and then sequesters himself away in a heavily fortified building that itself looks pretty rundown and threadbare. Alexander’s mother Susanna (Florence Mezzara) has prepared a rather huge cake for her son, but before the festivities begin, one of Alexander’s little buddies comes underneath his second floor bedroom window and urges him to come down and play with a soccer ball. That then reveals an inner courtyard of sorts where the kids frolic in a pretty unavoidably seeming dystopian environment.

It’s rather discursively detailed that the guy seen in the first sequence is named Gregori (Vincent Cassel), and that while the setting of the film may not be a post-apocalyptic dystopia in the “proper” sense, there’s something a bit—well, unusual going on. Partisan very slowly pulls back the narrative layers to finally offer its hook, which is that Gregori is a cult leader of sorts who has assembled a whole retinue of women with their young kids, all of whom live in this ramshackle assortment of buildings surrounding that aforementioned courtyard, and where Gregori is training the kids to be—assassins. Wait—what?

There’s a certain suspension of disbelief which is absolutely essential to making it through Partisan’s sometimes portentous plot proceedings. Sarah Cyngler’s seemingly intentionally obfuscatory screenplay doesn’t waste much expository energy on trying to detail exactly how this odd situation evolved, simply thrusting the viewer down in the midst of Gregori’s training regimen, which offers the man as a putative father figure with an undeniably playful streak who nonetheless evidently has hired hits on his mind.

An undeniably odd disconnect between context and affect suffuses the establishing scenes of Gregori with what amounts his private harem and brood. This is a guy who is after all schooling kids in how to shoot, but who couches everything in more “Dad-like” approaches like handing out gold stars for appropriate behavior. Perhaps surprisingly, then, there’s really not much unintentional humor here, a testament to Kleiman’s directorial acumen, which tends to emphasize the grittier aspects of this particular lifestyle.

The film ultimately manages to work up a bit more narrative impetus once Alexander is sent on a “mission”, but is then privy to pangs of conscience, not necessarily due to that particular interchange, but at least tangentially due to a perhaps surprising other development, the death of a chicken back in that aforementioned courtyard. That finally sets up the central conflict of the film, where Alexander, as a typical rebellious pre-teen, has to come to terms with his “father”’s legacy.

Partisan is incredibly strong on mood, but maddeningly short on plot mechanics. The film rests almost solely on the performance abilities of Cassel and Chabriel, and in this regard the film is largely successful. Cassel has this kind of scruffy obsessive down pat, but Chabriel, a relative newcomer with a disarmingly angelic face, is a real find and seems poised for a major film career.

Partisan Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Partisan is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The film has been rather interestingly color graded at times in a kind of cool slate gray hue, though there are other sequences that indulge in the more familiar blue or yellow tones. Perhaps surprisingly, then, detail is generally excellent, especially in close-ups where elements like the weird frizz on Gregori's blue sweater are easily visible. Kleiman and cinematographer Germain McMicking offer some pretty bleak looking exterior scenes, especially when Alexander ventures out of the confines of his compound, and a few of these shots feature significant depth of field. While the palette is probably intentionally fairly subdued throughout the presentation, there are inviting and accurate looking pops of color offered at times, courtesy of admittedly small elements like ribbing on some of the kids' shirts or even some of the foodstuffs the mothers make for their kids. Clarity and sharpness are generally quite commendable, and there are no issues with image instability.

Partisan Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Partisan's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track offers good support for the film's occasionally overbearing score by Daniel Lopatin, while also offering good placement of ambient environmental effects, both within the compound and without. Dialogue, which can be fairly sparse at times, is presented cleanly and clearly. There are no issues with distortion, dropouts or any other problems.

Partisan Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interviews

  Ariel Kleiman, Director (1080i; 15:00)

  Vincent Cassel, Gregori (1080p; 9:09)

• Trailer (1080p; 2:09)

Note: As is often the case with Well Go USA releases, this Blu-ray disc has been authored so that all the supplements follow one another automatically. Trailers for other Well Go USA releases (which also play automatically at boot up, but which are skippable) then follow the official supplements automatically as well.

Partisan Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Partisan has a compelling if far fetched concept and two excellent performances by Cassel and Chabriel, but the film simply lets too much exposition go by the wayside to ever work up the requisite emotional energy to make what is supposed to be a devastating denouement resonate very fully. Best appreciated as an exercise in mood and style if not narrative cohesion, the film proves that Kleiman is a director with a vision, but one who might need to woodshed a bit more vigorously with his scenarists. Technical merits are strong, and with caveats noted, Partisan comes Recommended.