A very young boy insists on committing a crime, and his two middle-aged accomplices see the upside to him tagging along in Rémi Allier’s short film, Zinneke.
Belgium
4*
Director:
Rémi Allier
Screenwriter:
Rémi Allier
Directors of Photography:
Kinan Massarani
Erika Meda
Running time: 20 minutes
“In the Brussels dialect, ‘Zinneke’ refers to the small Senne River that flows past the city. People used to throw stray puppies into the river to get rid of them.”
Zinneke’s stray puppy is the nine-year-old Thomas (neither his age nor his name appears in the film itself). The first time we see him, he is sitting alone in the middle of a flea market in Brussels. His gaze is melancholy but curious. His focus is on two men in their late 40s, Pascal and Bruno, hawking their wares. Although it seems they have met before, Thomas’s assertiveness in offering to help them and then, getting into their minivan and even threatening them if they don’t let him join them, catches us off-guard. What is he up to?
Whether he is after money or adventure or a substitute family is unclear, Thomas is undeterred and eventually convinces the guys to let him ride along. Day turns to night, and they arrive at a nondescript row house, where Thomas has to enter through the cellar and open a window for Pascal to climb through. Everything goes as planned, and they get their hands on a few pieces of household art. But then the alarm goes off, and the new friendship is put to the test. Do the experienced thieves stay and get their young accomplice out of trouble despite the risk of arrest?
Pre-teen Nissim Renard excels in the lead role as a boy whose confidence is tinged with melancholy but never veers too far from the centre. He is a model for child actors everywhere seeking to convey characters who are strong but still act their age. Thomas is insistent but doesn’t throw tantrums, and he is curious while never sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.
Initially, this 20-minute short seems to contain a wild mixture of visuals that don’t always fit together. The often rough camerawork and editing during the burglary and the kaleidoscope-like raindrops on the car windows are two prominent examples in this respect. But viewed as an oblique manifestation of Thomas’s own frame of mind – both scared and mesmerised by the experience – this representation is unobtrusive and entirely appropriate.
For all the naturalism of the acting, the effortless switching between French and Flemish and the careful approach to obtain a coherent representation, however, the film doesn’t really allow us to invest emotionally in the drama until the very last moment. Here, Thomas’s domestic situation becomes a little clearer. We also see traces of the beginning of a real friendship between him and Pascal. And yet, this is one of those films whose pieces all seem to be cut from the same cloth: Nothing feels out of place. Everything is tightly bound to each other, largely thanks to the realism of the performances. And when the final credits roll, we ignore the nagging part of our brain that wants to know what comes next, and we soak up the energy from a short film whose director and cast were fully in control of every second.