IN YOUR HANDS
(AU BOUT DES DOIGTS)

Director: Ludovic Bernard
Country: France
Starring: Jules Benchetrit, Lamber Wilson, Kristin Scott Thomas, André Marcon
Duration: 105 min
Date of Release: 26/12/2018
Genre: Drama

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Filmmaker Ludovic Bernard (Mission Pays Basque) has seen his star-power rise meteorically since working as an assistant director for Luc Besson on Lucy (2014). In Your Hands demonstrates his elegance and sensitivity behind the lens with an emotionally stirring tale of a deprived young man and his rare gift for music.

Mathieu (Jules Benchetrit) lives with his mother and siblings in a housing project where peer group pressures have led him into petty theft. When the director of a prestigious music conservatory, Pierre (Lambert Wilson, opening night film of AF FFF2017, The Odyssey; and Raising Colours in this year’s Festival), hears Mathieu playing piano at a railway station (#pianoengare), he is blown away. Pierre decides to use his influence to secure private lessons for Mathieu at the conservatory with the imposing Countess (Kristin Scott Thomas), although with a secret agenda: to enter Mathieu in an international competition.

“You play because you can’t not play,” says Pierre of his prodigy but social pressures, and the both exciting and daunting prospect of performing piano professionally, causes Mathieu to question himself. Will he play at the international competition or not? Not even Mathieu knows the answer.

With a sweeping and swirling camera that seems to get ‘inside’ the music, Bernard wrangles many themes in In Your Hands, including that of social privation, although distinguished along class lines, not race or creed. Mathieu’s tackling of Rachmaninoff echoes the 1996 film Shine, in which Geoffrey Rush as the adult David Helfgott also conquers this ‘Everest’ of classical piano.