The Son of Joseph

Connoisseur's favourite Eugène Green (The Portuguese Nun) continues to create quirky pictures of exceptional quality that combine wry insights into human nature with perceptive musings on the healing power of art. He's on playful form in this study of fatherhood, faith and fraternity that opens with Parisian teenager Victor Ezenfis reading a letter addressed to mother Natacha Régnier and jumping to the conclusion that publisher Mathieu Amalric is his father. However, while hiding under the chaise longue in Amalric's office, Ezenfis discovers a caddish side that pushes him in the direction of Amalric's prodigal brother, Fabrizio Rongione. Staged with Green's trademark baroque theatricality, this slender tale is sumptuously photographed by Raphaël O'Byrne and full of charming set pieces, with the visits to the Louvre and a madrigal concert by Le Poème Harmonique only being topped by Maria de Medeiros's splendid cameo at a literary soirée. Brisk, witty, devotional and unabashedly intellectual, this is a deadpan delight.