Peaux de vaches

Thick Skinned was chosen by Cahiers du Cinéma as one of the ten films of 1989. That year, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Nanni Moretti’s Red Wood Pigeon were chosen as the best. The list also included David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, and Jacques Rivette’s The Gang of Four. Even though Patricia Mazuy’s first feature is one of those films that don’t need to display their medals in order to convince the indecisive and untrusting, it doesn’t hurt to remember that they exist. And they’re well earned. This story about two brothers who, one drunken night, set fire to a barn in their family farm and, this way, kill a bum who had sought shelter there, has something of the rawness of a William Faulkner novel or the twisted guild of one by Dostoevsky, but shot with the firm hand and the personality that define the French filmmaker’s entire work.