Three Dancing Slaves
Three Dancing Slaves
NR | 02 September 2005 (USA)
Three Dancing Slaves Trailers

Annecy is no tourist destination for three working-class Algerian brothers and their father, in the months after their mother has died. Marc is deeply troubled: he tries to stiff drug dealers and then plots revenge. Christophe is released from jail, lands a job, and must overcome various temptations in order to keep it. Olivier, nearing 18, may be falling in love with Hicham...

Reviews
Actuakers One of my all time favorites.
SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
Beulah Bram A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
jim smith A Gael Morel film whose theme will be familiar to viewers who have seen "Wild Reeds" or "Come Undone" : young, handsome, sexy, disturbed young Frenchies trapped in the limited prospects offered by the mediocre towns and cities far from Paris. Here we have the three sons of an indifferent French father and a Maghreb mother, recently deceased. Where they live horny young men lack even a town whore for relief and, resignedly, must rely on the local grouchy, bored transvestite. Morel favorite Stephane Rideau is a 20-something, "scared straight" ex con who will trade his youthful wildness for the dull comfort and security of middle class respectability while his two younger brothers grapple, respectively, with intolerable powerlessness and gay love.All the guys are eye candy and Morel and his actors have never suffered from fear of frontal. All of which would mean little were it not for the interesting characters and Morel's unique cinematic style. Rent it. You'll enjoy it. And if it turns out you disagree, hell, it's only 88 minutes including the credits crawl. Jim Smith
swmyers We tend to laud films like American Beauty because they peel away the veneer of idealized American domesticity to reveal lives of quiet desperation. We take comfort in that -- knowing that even seemingly perfect lives are, under the surface, as miserable as we might view our own to be. In Morel's Le Clan (Three Dancing Slaves was the title I saw it under here in the States), we get a truer, less sanitized view of real lives laid bare. The desperation isn't quiet. It's crazed and exposed and all too believable. It's a very masculine film showing how men just do what they do. No apologies and, all too often, no explanations. Yet, somehow, it's relatable and understandable. Yes, it's a slice of pain punctuated with too few moments of what we would call joy. But sprinkled throughout are small glimpses of a more beautiful world. It's not lost on these characters. And it's not lost on the viewer. I found it haunting and heart-wrenching.
pgspat Worst cruelty to a dog in cinema history.... One only hopes it was staged. The overall depressing movie not worth the few scenes of male nudity. No women to be found in this french coming of age for 3 very disturbed brothers. If this is the way it is for french youth no wonder they are rioting. The plot is so hidden I couldn't give you a spoiler if I tried to. It is the worst french movie I have ever watched. I saw the advocate say this movie was "sexy", but I saw it as very depressing and I didn't relate or have sympathy for any of the characters except the dog. Gael Morel purposely features the puppy in various playful scenes early in the movie so he can heighten the shock for the movie viewer.... there never is any understanding of why this needed to be in the movie.
bdornon2 "A beautifully rendered slice-of-life film", says Netflix: I would say it's more a sick pedophile's leering look at young Arabs in some god-forsaken French village. Though there are occasional beautiful shots of a nearby lake (it's hard to screw up sunlight on a lake, folks) the majority of the film is monotonously bland. The young actors are all physically beautiful, but forced to say and do the most unattractive things by this sick twisted film maker. More appropriate adjectives than "beautifully rendered" would be pointless, sickening, ugly, tedious, disjointed, boring, ridiculous, obtuse, unclear, loud, obnoxious, and stupid. Three Dancing Slaves may be the most miserably unpleasant movie I have ever seen. I've been an avid movie watcher for forty years and this is the first time I ever wanted to leave the theater, including PINK FLAMINGOES. But where FLAMINGOES is intended to be funny, and the gross-out humor is intentionally over the top and self-consciously silly, SLAVES takes itself totally seriously. The entire film is conducted without any vestige of humor, grace, or wit, and the gay angle is minor, trivial, and pointless.