HARMANDEEP PALMINDER IN YOUNG TIGER: MANY WITH HIS FRENCH SCHOOLMATES

A young Punjabi striver at risk in Paris

Young Tiger marks the inaugural feature of Cyprien Vial, who previously wrote and directed four shorts, one the Cannes prizewinner In Range. Here he relates the problems and accomplishments of the colorful Many (Harmandeep Palminder), a Punjabi boy arrived in France at fifteen without documents (and under French law, because under 18, due state protection). In the role Palminder, long-faced, tall, with big almond eyes, full lips, and a ready smile, becomes a most appealing vehicle for a "social survival thriller" (as the filmmaker calls it) cum coming of age tale. Under the protection of an older Indian, the sub-rosa entrepreneur Kamal (Vikram Sharma), who finds him a foster family and puts him into school and then to work, Many in two years, at 17, is popular in his multi-cultural class, with an African-French girlfriend called Elisabeth (Elisabeth Lando). He talks to his family on the phone all the time and they expect him to send back 500 euros a month when it's only by taking great risks that he can send back 80. The French are indulgent, but also strict. He has opportunities that his obvious energies and talents may allow him to fulfill. But if he works illegally, he'll never get papers. And if he doesn't keep up with his studies, he cannot advance in school. He is given hope he may be able to study engineering. In fact he may be lucky to go to a trade school. (His local family member is a train conductor.) And if he succumbs to pressure from his clandestine employer and his family back home, he may just be expelled from the country.

Vial provides a string of events that keep the film chugging along and the life of its bright and shining protagonist in a state of constant manic intensity: Many is always on the run. He does well in school and seems to perform enormous skillful feats of multitasking. But the illegal jobs are a dangerous pull that leads him to lie constantly, to his somewhat bland foster parents, his flickering by teachers, and his unseen mother. The stress Many's in undermines his relations with his otherwise adoring girlfriend and he will eventually be pressured by the system to betray the one to whom he owes the most, and contend with a nasty competitor, Sony (Amandeep Singh). The jobs and contacts with similar workers occur at a Sikh temple. At school, his closest classmates seem authentic and appealing. At this semi-documentary local color Vian excels. Nonetheless, partly out of too great an eagerness to represent collective experience and partly because the world has itself become more generic, this film lacks the deeply lived-in specificity and sense of place of a movie like Ken Loach's 1969 classic Kes. PartlyYoung Tiger is appealing and reads like a Young Adult novel, with the plusses and minuses of the genre, and is a convincing performance by Palminder and a promising beginning by Vial. But as Vial points out in a Variety interview, he's seeking to show the French system's contradictions in dealing with young immigrants, particularly the smartest ones.

Céline Sciamma was a storyline consultant.

Young Tiger/Bébé tigre, 87 mins., debuted at Namur, Bordeau, and Saint-Jean-de-Luz Octo ber 2014, French theatrical release 14 January 2015 to good reviews (AlloCiné press rating 3.8). Shown as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center-UniFrance cosponsored series Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2015 (this film's North American premiere), where it awas screened for this review.


HARMANDEEP PALMINDER: MANY NETWORKS AT THE SIKH TEMPLE

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.