Something to watch tonight: Monday 27 May

Dark Diamond aka Diamant Noir (Harari, 2016)

After sub­mit­ting my pre­view of three films in the French Film Festival Aotearoa last week, I was curi­ous about what had happened to films I had seen in pre­vi­ous incarn­a­tions. Luckily, one of my picks from the 2017 ver­sion of the fest­iv­al is avail­able on the free ser­vice Brollie.

I pre­viewed Dark Diamond for RNZ at the time:

A revenge thrill­er set around the Antwerp dia­mond mar­kets, this is a film that you do not want to be late for. The open­ing scene is shock­ing and bloody and I was reminded that the phrase grand guign­ol was inven­ted in France. The film nev­er gets quite that shock­ing again but you always feel that it has the poten­tial and the res­ult­ing ten­sion car­ries you through.

Pier (Niels Schneider) is a young petty crim­in­al and labour­er. When his estranged fath­er dies, he dis­cov­ers the rest of his fam­ily – rich dia­mond mer­chants – had cheated his fath­er out of his inher­it­ance and his fin­gers years before. When he is offered a build­ing job by his cous­in, Pier decides to take advant­age. He insinu­ates him­self into the fam­ily, all the while with ven­geance on his mind.

Refer a friend

Of course, noth­ing is quite as simple as it seems and the film gets into quite a tangle before fall­ing apart a bit in the final quarter, as if it didn’t really know how to resolve itself. Atmospheric, and it pays its smal­ler char­ac­ters plenty of respect.

In those days I had the stam­ina to cov­er five films in a single fest­iv­al pre­view. This piece also fea­tured La fille de Brest star­ring Sidse Babett Knudsen (and that one is good enough to get a recom­mend­a­tion here anoth­er time), wacky Bruno Dumont’s Slack Bay (aka Ma Loute), Baden Baden by Rachel Lang, and the Deneuve clas­sic The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Where to watch Dark Diamond

Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on Brollie* (free)

Canada and USA: Streaming on Ovid

Ireland and UK: Currently unavailable

*Brollie may or may not be geo-blocked in your loc­a­tion. Their terms and con­di­tions indic­ate that it’s decided on a title by title basis, based on rights. If you are out­side New Zealand or Australia, it may be worth a try. let me know what you find out.