“It’s a long way to a party, but then they’re more your friends than mine.” So says David (Ralph Fiennes), a British doctor with an incomplete track record, who we first meet on a boat for “l’Afrique” with his wife, Jo (Jessica Chastain, who co-starred with Fiennes in Coriolanus of 2011). She is an unproductive children’s author who has fallen out of favor with her young readers – an audience she loathes. He’s a “high-functioning alcoholic,” a phrase he likens to a double negative, as if they cancel each other out. They go to Richard (a louche Matt Smith) and Dally’s (Caleb Landry Jones, all sulking) ksour (‘meaning castle’) – a shabby party villa renovated by the ‘little Moroccans’ to whom the owners protect I owe so many. But while driving drunk in the desert during a marital dispute, David hits and kills a young boy whose broken body is brought to the party. The boy’s name is Driss, but no one knows – yet. For now, he is just “a nobody from a distant village”. someone whose death can be swept under the carpet as an unfortunate accident. David and Joe’s tough hosts seem to agree, reassuring their guests that all will be well with the authorities as long as they look “overwhelmingly remorseful”, which David agrees he can muster if “absolutely necessary”. Fiennes brings a touch of Leonard Rossiter’s Reggie Perrin to his portrayal of David Of course, Driss is no one. He has a father, Abdellah (Ismael Kanater), who arrives at the villa and announces that “the Englishman must pay” by accompanying him back to his remote village to bury his son. David initially holds back, fearing blackmail or murder (“they might be fucking Isis”). He finally agrees to leave, leaving Jo (who has been diligently reading André Gide’s The Immoralist) to fall into a casual fling with Christopher Abbott’s American financial analyst Tom, while her husband goes either for retribution or redemption. The way The Forgiven lays out its thematic stable is minimally subtle, from the blood that stains David’s driving gloves to the overuse of the phrase “those people” peppering the dialogue. Yet even though they run the risk of privileging its unlovable white characters, their stories aren’t the drama’s most compelling element. Look at the scene in which Abdellah and David discuss the precise Western obsession with fossils, particularly those that look like demons falling from the sky. It is Kanater, not Fiennes, who dominates the screen, his expression oscillating between sadness, rage, menace and despair. Similarly, the character of the guide and translator Anouar (Saïd Taghmaoui) is infinitely more developed than the collection of awful American, French or British caricatures with which he is surrounded. Saïd Taghmaoui (centre) with Ralph Fiennes (left) in The Forgiven. Alamy Having excelled in McDonagh brother Martin’s jet-black comedy In Bruges, Fiennes brings a touch of Leonard Rossiter’s Reggie Perrin to his portrayal of David, appearing to press his chin to his chest while simultaneously turning his nose up at the world. As for Chastain, she combines regalness with a dash of the laid-back (remember her Lady Macbeth-like turn in A Most Violent Year?), empathy, and emptiness doing battle behind her ever-changing sunglasses. Cinematographer Larry Smith juxtaposes bright widescreen vistas with the increasingly dark tone of the material, a contrast accentuated as David’s metaphysical journey is juxtaposed with snoring revelry back at the villa. Meanwhile, Lorne Balfe’s sparsely used score leaves plenty of open space for the drama to breathe, as if inviting the audience to fill in the blanks with an internal accompaniment (tragic? Comical? Ironic?) of their choosing.
