Despite perpetuating the dangerous myth that actors are funny and cool people, The Braves emerges from behind a textbook Bohemian-arts tale in its first act to reveal a quietly complex and affecting drama about young people forced to confront matters much maturer than themselves. The second film from French filmmaker Anaïs Volpé (although touted as her debut by some) confidently enters the canon of “play-within-a-film” cinema. The Braves probes what charged emotions actors bring to their performances, both with what they don’t want to forget, and what they can’t help but always remember.
Alma (Déborah Lukumuena) and Margot (Souheila Yacoub) are two actors in their 20s, and the first thing we learn about them is they think the other sucks at acting. The Braves begins with them shit-talking each other in an audition, causing such a disruption that the director Kristin (Sveva Alviti) sends them all out. They rejoin outside — where they embrace in fits of laughter. It’s a stunt these two Parisian best friends pull to get noticed in auditions. When Alma is offered the part, and Margot the understudy, there’s no resentment, no jealousy and no rivalry felt by one towards the other. These girls are committed to their friend achieving the utmost success, and will rally for that no matter what. And when “no matter what” hits, they struggle to move forward in a life where the number one priority is someone else.
Volpé’s film is an accomplished balance of natural, free-wheeling performances and a focused, well-structured narrative, achieved by always honing in on the always shifting dramatic questions at the heart of every scene. After a devastating reveal, how does Margot proceed with the play when she would previously always prioritise Alma? To what extent is lying to your best friend necessary for both of your own goods? Every time you think the film will spin out a conflict for longer than necessary, Volpé resolves it and presents a fresher, more interesting development. While at times you wish a tense beat could be explored to a fuller extent, The Braves never feels rushed. The pacing keeps everything clipping along at a rate that often matches the boundless energy of the leads, and keeps pushing them when they desperately need a break.
The Braves is a film about friendship first, the power and purpose of theatrical performance second. Margot is our perspective for the film, and Yacoub is a commendable emotional anchor; vibrantly emotive, open, and vulnerable in a completely unselfish way. The complexities of her lows don’t need to be articulated; we can always read from her expressions and behaviour how gnarled and knotted her worries have become. But she shares the spotlight with Lukumuena, who brings to life a brash and commanding character whose contradictory and impulsive behaviour becomes more understandable as we watch. There’s a bared heart to everything she does, whether she self-protectively lashes out at a date before imploring him to come back, or interrupts Margot being hit on at a wedding they crashed with a stolen trumpet.
While it’s not the priority of the narrative, The Braves has a fair share to say about how performance defines our lives, and vice versa. The play Alma/Margot are cast in is a monologue about an Italian immigrant coming to jazz-age New York, and their director constantly pushes them to reveal something introspective they may not have realised themselves in their performances. It’s a show about displacement, trepidation, and youthful hope; the parallels to Alma and Margot’s lives aren’t the most subtle, but Volpé still accesses a profound resonance between the two stories.
“You come on stage with Alma,” Kristen tells Margot in a particularly laboured rehearsal, as performance is shown to be an exercise in bringing other people into the self, a process that can be powerful but still draining. It doesn’t quite have the transcendence of Drive My Car, but as far as stories within stories go, it’s a damn sight better than Euphoria. The climax of The Braves is perhaps its most predictable stretch, but its closing moments let its thesis stand tall: artistic expression is a fantastic tool for making sense of the unexplainable tragedies we can’t help avoiding.
