The Lost Son

Daniel Auteuil - Xavier Lombard
Nastassja Kinski - Deborah Spitz
Katrin Cartlidge - Emily
Ciarán Hinds - Carlos
Marianne Denicourt - Nathalie
Billie Whitelaw - Mrs. Spitz
Bruce Greenwood - Friedman

For many, Daniel Auteuil is European cinema’s face of gloom. The Frenchman's weary, time-etched visage has leant a sardonic emotional gravitas to such heavyweight art-house pictures as Jean Do Florette and Manon Des Sources, and it's through his untrusting eyes in The Lost Son that we experience a side to London we wish didn't exist in this Anglo-French co-production, directed by Chris Menges.

Auteuil's first English-language role casts hint as Lombard, a marginally successful private detective living alone with his goldfish in Soho, the seedy heart of the capital. The ideal soulless backdrop for this modern film noir, indeed it's refreshing to watch director Menges' naturalistic representation of London given the recant hackneyed over-stylised depictions in Notting Hill and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, this is one the tourist guides won't warm to.

But then The Lost Son is a compelling, repellent film, with its refusal to shy away from certain taboo subjects commendable but also frequently unpalatable. Through Lombard we become caught up in an international paedophile network in which frighteningly young Third World children are kidnapped, stripped of identity and hired out to sick men in soundproofed, windowless hotel rooms. Some petrified kids don't survive their first 'encounter'. Of course, you don't just stumble across this kind of twisted subculture by accident. A former Narcotics Squad officer in Paris, Lombard is hired by an old colleague, Carlos (Hinds), whose well-off English in-laws are searching for their son, Leon, a heroin addict photographer missing for months. Lombard's connections in the underworld, in particular with French hooker Nathalie (Denicourt), combined with suspicious material retrieved from Leon's flat, propel Lombard to Mexico on a one man mission to eradicate this filth from the face of the planet.

It's a tough and unlikely task, the least convincing aspect of a solid script. That Menges felt it necessary to counter the film's initial clandestine violence with its more conventional gun-toting denouement is perhaps symptomatic of Europe's desire to reap Hollywood box-office action, though thankfully its effect on this intelligent thriller is minimal.