Valéry Carnoy’s fiercely acted but dramatically unfocused film is about a sudden, mysterious crisis of confidence that undermines everything a young man thinks he knows about himself. It’s a brick dislodged from a wall that brings everything crashing down.
The setting is a sports boarding school in France; evidently INSEP, the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance, in the Bois de Vincennes just outside Paris. Camille (Samuel Kirchner) is a tough, troubled kid from a broken home – and a brilliant boxer on the verge of national greatness. His best mate is fellow boxer Matteo (Fayçal Anaflous), who has broken the rules so often he is on the verge of being kicked out.
Camille has a strange enthusiasm: he steals cuts of meat from the school’s kitchen to attract foxes in the surrounding woodland, and clearly he identifies with these cunning, fugitive creatures. Fooling around in this forbidden zone leads to a terrible accident from which he is lucky to escape with no more than a nasty scar. But Camille becomes morbidly obsessed with the purely psychosomatic pain in his arm that prevents him from boxing properly, to the rage of his coach and teammates. He also conceives a liking for fellow pupil Yas (Anna Heckel), a Taekwondo student who, with a poignantly unacknowledged talent, likes secretly playing the trumpet in the woods.
Have the arm injury and its consequent distractions simply revealed to Camille not merely how fragile he is, but also led him to the realisation that there is more to life than just punching people? If so, it could be a blessing in disguise. But his coach justifiably sees it as a catastrophic lapse in discipline and focus. Boxing is Camille’s way to succeed in life. These other thoughts are a luxury that a working-class kid can’t afford. So what should Camille learn from this enigmatic crisis?
There are a lot of ideas and images swirling around this film; they don’t all gel and the movie’s climactic confrontation and its final resolution do not quite work. But the acting, physical presence and energy of Camille and his crew deliver a real punch.