Standing Tall Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Standing Tall Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 19, 2016

Lest there be any confusion, Standing Tall should not be confused with The Walking Tall Trilogy (or even Walking Tall), as the film is in fact kind of like a Gallic mash up of Boyhood and Short Term 12 , as odd as that combination may sound. Anchored by a committed and involving performance by newcomer Rod Paradot as a troubled youth struggling with a dysfunctional family and the trials of being in and out of foster care and the French legal system, Standing Tall may not be cathartically uplifting in any major way, but it’s a fascinating document of how “juvenile delinquents” are treated in France. The film begins with a harried mother having been brought before a magistrate named Florence Blaque (Catherine Deneuve, seemingly busier now in her “golden years” than she was as an ingenue). Blaque is attempting to talk a little sense into the mother, a very young woman named Séverine (Sara Forestier), who has a crying baby on her lap and what looks to be a fairly sweet little toddler named Manoly tooling about the judge’s offices and finding some convenient toys to play with. When Blaque tries to offer Séverine some parenting advice, Séverine basically goes ballistic and accuses the ostensibly sweet little Manoly of being an uncontrollable monster. She throws a bag of clothing on Blaque’s desk and basically tells the judge that the little boy is her problem now. A quick segue then finds Manoly (Rod Paradot) as a teenager driving insanely recklessly over various landscapes with a couple of excited girls (not wearing seatbelts, it should be added) flailing around in the backseat as he engages in various stunts like performing “donuts”. Maybe Séverine was right after all, the film seems to be suggesting, and that impression is only furthered when Manoly is called before Blaque again and is not exactly a cooperating witness.

Blaque’s concern for Manoly is about the only stabilizing influence in the boy’s life, as the film makes clear in several subsequent scenes, many of which ironically play out in Blaque’s offices as a series of relatives descend into petty arguments between themselves rather than trying to help an obviously troubled youth. That said, it soon becomes obvious that Manoly is not exactly receptive to being helped—he’s sullen, prone to fits of violence, and just generally unlikable. Paradot, who looks kind of like a teenaged Gary Sinise, brings a visceral intensity to the role (he won a César for his performance), and one of the more remarkable things about his approach is how despite the prickly exterior he displays, he also is able to convey a rather arresting (no pun intended, consdering Manoly’s rap sheet) vulnerability to the character as well.

Standing Tall has a chronological narrative arc that traces Manoly’s “adventures” in both rehab facilities and, ultimately, jail, but it tends to play out in a kind of vignette structure. There’s some probably needless detours into a romantic subplot that unfolds (rather predictably, it should be added) when he meets the daughter of a worker at a kind of rehab ranch where he’s sent, and there’s even more needless melodrama late in the film when Manoly’s penchant for driving fast and unsafely leads to disastrous consequences. But the film is anchored by a more or less realistic mien, though it would seem that French social workers and the judicial system there are decidedly more personally involved in the welfare of their charges than some other countries (ahem).

There are a few missteps that tend to gloss over what would seem to be interesting aspects to Manoly's character. At one point one of his teachers is helping him to write an essay about himself, something he struggles to complete, at which point the teacher tells him to write about how funny he can be. That's all well and good, except for the fact that the film has shown us absolutely none of Manoly's humor, and in fact has tended to focus on his more impudent and aggressively defensive qualities. It might have helped to have at least occasionally shown a somewhat lighter, more humanized, side of this obviously wounded kid.

Perhaps commendably, Standing Tall doesn’t wrap everything up in a pretty bow, suggesting that Manoly’s manifest issues are suddenly “solved” after years of hard work by a coterie of involved support staff. Instead, the film seems to suggest that deeply scarred individuals may never be able to fully shrug off the vagaries of their fate, but can at least function a little more normally in society at large if they’re given the tools to do so. Deneuve brings a nicely balanced tone to Blaque in this regard, alternately stern and nurturing. She’s the kind of no nonsense but still supportive judge any parent might hope would be involved should their children ever get into serious trouble.

Standing Tall Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Standing Tall is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Media Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists the Arri Alexa XT as the camera utilized on this shoot, and the film offers a generally sleek and very well detailed image despite the fact that there are relatively few aspects to this story that offer "wow" visuals. The one major exception to that generalization is the great sequence at the "rehab ranch", an incredibly scenic location that offers nice depth of field and a vivid palette in several extremely scenic outdoor sequences. A lot of the rest of the film plays out in drab and pretty grimy interiors, where good detail levels are relegated to elements like fabrics in apparel like Manoly's plush blue baseball cap or even graffiti on the walls. There's one quasi-hallucinatory club scene that is very dimly lit, with some effects that add an intentionally soft and even opaque look to things.

Standing Tall Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Standing Tall features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, which is a plus considering Cohen's recently spotty record of not having lossless audio on their Blu-ray releases, though in a kind of odd authoring approach, the disc actually defaults to the also included Dolby Digital 5.1 track, so audiophiles should be aware. That said, this is not a sonically ambitious film, though it occasionally derives some rather frenetic surround energy is scenes like the ones with Manoly in various cars or the club sequence. Otherwise, this is a film built out of smaller, if sometimes pretty intense, dialogue scenes, and as such the 5.1 mix may not offer a glut of immersion but features excellent fidelity and no problems whatsoever.

Standing Tall Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:44)


• Inside the Film (1080p; 19:12) is a "cinema roundtable" hosted by Lauren Weil featuring Rod Paradot, Emmanuelle Bercot and Benoit Magimel.


• 8 Deleted Scenes (1080p; 27:18) features (non removable) commentary by Emmanuelle Bercot.

Standing Tall Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Standing Tall opened the 2015 Cannes Festival (out of competition) and was obviously well regarded at least by the French, who went on to bestow a lot of César nominations on it, something probably not hindered by the fact that it was directed by Emmanuelle Bercot. The film doesn't quite achieve the emotional resonance it seems to be aiming for, but it certainly has provided Paradot with a cinematic debut of note, and Deneuve is as commanding as ever. Technical merits are generally strong, and Standing Tall comes Recommended.