Hippocrates an astutely judged film

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      Starring Vincent Lacoste and Reda Kateb. In French, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.

      The French don’t need Justin Long, Jesse Eisenberg, or Michael Cera—they have all those dudes and more rolled into the person of Vincent Lacoste, who specializes in playing gormless everyguys in over their heads. Having made his career in comedies like the Astérix et Obélix series, Lacoste is disarming as the lead in a hyperrealistic drama about a young doctor coping with life and death during his internship at a besieged urban hospital.

      The young star’s bushy-haired Benjamin quotes all the right Hippocratic platitudes. But as soon as he’s confronted by real complexity, he crumbles. And a case involving a homeless alcoholic takes a fateful turn when Benjamin fails—through no true fault of his own—to do a full diagnostic.

      The lad’s problems are both ameliorated and amplified by the fact that his father (Jacques Gamblin) is head of the unit where he’s interning. His most crucial coming-of-age experience is with a fellow intern whose self-reliance and calming bedside manner come naturally; Abdel (Reda Kateb) was already an experienced doctor in his native Algeria and now must start over in the French system—one with high standards but increasingly strained resources.

      Abdel seems the soul of reason, but when Benjamin carelessly dumps some trouble on him, the two men begin punishing each other. But Hippocrates, as the name implies, isn’t about doing harm, and very few scenes play out the way you expect them to.

      This astutely judged film has minimal music and some of the fly-on-the-wall detachment of a Frederick Wiseman documentary (except for a single melodramatic development near the end). It’s made even more remarkable when you learn that its maker, writer-director Thomas Lilti, was trained under similar circumstances and still practises medicine on a part-time basis. The film takes us to grungy places that outsiders rarely see and is full of inside stuff—including the running joke that everyone on staff is addicted to reruns of House.

      Comments