Jean-Charles Hue's "Eat Your Bones" is set in a community of gypsies with Hue using non-professional actors all playing characters with the same names as themselves. What little plot there is centers on Fred, just released from prison after 15 years for killing a cop, and his 18 year-old half-brother Jason who, on the eve of his baptism, wants to live a little, even it means becoming a criminal like his older brother. Together with another brother and a cousin they head off to steal a truck load of copper.
Hue films it naturalistically and draws quite extraordinary performances from his four leads. For most of the time not a great deal happens and yet there is a palpable sense of tension as these would-be criminals drive through the night, often at speed, with the intention of getting up to no good. They are like children playing at being American gangsters but this is no New-Wave tribute to the noirish films of the fifties like "Kiss Me Deadly" or "The Big Combo" but something altogether fresher and highly original. It remains virtually unseen and cries out for some sort of release.
Hue films it naturalistically and draws quite extraordinary performances from his four leads. For most of the time not a great deal happens and yet there is a palpable sense of tension as these would-be criminals drive through the night, often at speed, with the intention of getting up to no good. They are like children playing at being American gangsters but this is no New-Wave tribute to the noirish films of the fifties like "Kiss Me Deadly" or "The Big Combo" but something altogether fresher and highly original. It remains virtually unseen and cries out for some sort of release.