Disco Boy (2024)

Giacomo Abbruzzese's debut feature, without doubt, marks him out for future exploration. Following the exploits of Aleksei, a Belarusian who arrives in Poland with his friend Mikhail to supposedly watch a football match, the film descends into something else entirely.

Once the pair are in Poland, they ditch the football fans and attempt to make their way into France, a terrifying and horrendously dangerous journey that ends in predictable tragedy. Their goal is to join the French foreign legion and as a result, become a French citizen within five years. Aleksei and Mikhail are in awe of France, and dream of drinking Bordeaux whilst speaking the language they've "learned from the movies."

Meanwhile in Nigeria- initially seemingly completely removed from Aleksei's world, there's an insurgent paramilitary group led by an excellent Morr Ndiaye as Jomo who fronts M.E.N.D (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) along with his sister Udoka (a mesmerising Laetitia Ky), both of which have an identifying mark of one eye colour being different from the other.

After Aleksei's brutal training regime with the foreign legion begins, we're reminded of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and the nods don't stop there. Aleksei and his troops are sent into the Niger Delta to rescue French hostages being held by Jomo and his guerilla outfit in scenes that call to mind Vietnam war films like Apocalypse Now (1979) or perhaps more aptly, Platoon (1986).

Something happens during this infiltration that affects Aleksei and Jomo for the rest of the film. Jomo muses early on what he might have been had he been born a "white boy"; perhaps he would have been a dancer, and this keys into Aleksei's behaviour post the Niger Delta extraction as he dances in a french nightclub.

Disco Boy is a whirlwind of questions and meditation; Lynchian at times in its suggestions and dream like states. Aleksei struggles with imagery and understanding after his meeting with Jomo, and- after glimpsing his sister across a river amongst a burning village in the Niger Delta- retreats more and more into a world that may or may not exist. The idea that the Jomo and Aleksei are two sides of the same coin- that Aleksei is indeed who Jomo might have been in a parallel universe is one that's very much left up to the viewer to decipher.

Vitalic's thumping techno score adds another layer of intrigue to proceedings, complimenting the hallucinogenic scenes that become more endemic in the film's second half, and if the whole thing doesn't remind you of Claire Denis' Beau Travail (1999) you either haven't seen it, or you've slept through the film.

But it would be some achievement to sleep through Disco Boy. Aleksei is portrayed by Franz Rogowski, an actor that for my money, might well be the finest working today. After captivating performances in Transit (2018), Terrence Malik's A Hidden Life (2019) and last years utterly brilliant Passages, Rogowski puts in a display here that, by now, we really shouldn't be shocked by. But he is just brilliant, slowly being worn down by his own mind and confusion, searching for answers he's not sure even exist.

The film's closing shots deliberately invoke Beau Travail, and far from being an insult to Denis' game-changer, Abbruzzese's first film as director boldly lays down a marker for what might follow. As for Rogowski, if he's not an Oscar winner within the next five years, the Academy will have made a serious mistake. Again. 8.0/10