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.
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.
