Toreros (2000)
Directed by Eric Barbier

Film Review

Éric Barbier's filmmaking career ended almost before it had begun, with the colossal box office failure of his debut feature Le Brasier, an insanely extravagant social drama centred on a mining community.  Undeterred by this humiliating flop, Barbier had a second stab at making his mark with Toreros, a noir-tinted realist drama, only to land himself with another critical and commercial failure.  After this second let down, Barbier gave up filmmaking for a time and directed his creative energies towards advertising, before returning to cinema in 2007 with Le Serpent, a thriller with more popular appeal.

Toreros has a great deal going for it, not least an extraordinary cast that includes some of the most talented performers of the time - Olivier Martinez, Claude Brasseur, Olivier Gourmet and Sergi López.  Martinez is particularly well cast as the indomitable lead character and the authenticity of his portrayal of a latter-day Sisyphus struggling against the odds gives the film some incredibly powerful moments.  The problem lies not on the acting or writing fronts, but with Barbier's over-grandiose vision, which makes the film look like a grim hangover from the Cinéma du Look style that briefly infected French cinema in the early 1980s, with its crass over-emphasis on visuals and failure to offer anything more than the most superficial representation of its protagonists. 

Toreros is a richly atmospheric piece with a distinctive baroque feel to it (evocative of André Téchiné's early films, such as Barocco), but the glaring self-consciousness of its mise-en-scène prevents it from having anything like the impact it deserves, given the quality of the acting and writing.  The film oddly prefigures the dark post-noir French thrillers of the following decade (culminating in Jacques Audiard's magnificent Un prophète (2009)), and it is tragic that the one thing preventing Barbier from being an instigating force in this dynamic new aesthetic is his frustrating tendency for over-statement.

Film Synopsis

For a time Manuel was one of Spain's leading toreadors, but his glittering career was tragically cut short when he sustained a serious injury in the course of one of his vastly attended bull fights.  Unable to find work, he drifted into a life of crime and was soon mixed up in drugs trafficking.  The authorities inevitably caught up with him and he spent two years in prison.  On his release, Manuel is determined to turn over a new leaf with the help of his family.  Alas, fortune is not on his side and his troubles return as he sets out to clear his father's crippling debts.  Manuel has only one course left open to him - he must resume his former career and return to the bullring...