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.

jaibo This is the story of 3 working class brothers, living with a weak father in the aftermath of their mother's death. The film is formally divided into 3 sections, one for each brother, although the protagonist remains the first brother we explore, Marc, a tortured soul.CONTAINS SPOILERS Marc is an interesting character, unable because of his position in a macho subculture to access his feelings, even though he often shows the potential to be a caring individual. When he is beaten up by some local thugs and his dog killed, he takes a revenge which rebounds on him, leaving him paralysed, machismo is paralysing being the point.The most interesting section of the film has the older brother Christophe's taking a job in a meat factory. He soon rises in his bosses' estimation and is promoted. On the way he has learned that to survive in the workplace, one has to be ruthless. We last see Christophe with a girlfriend and a future. We know that he has achieved that future by accepting his part in a dehumanising world. It is no coincidence that he has been released from a spell in prison at the play's start. Prison has tamed him, he has agreed to conform, he takes his place amongst the dead meat, he is rewarded.The film is strongly homo erotic and the camera spends its time dwelling on the brother's bodies, especially Marc who is exceptionally attractive (making it all the more tragic when he body is crushed. I have read a po-faced review which says that this reduced its characters to sex objects. This is telling about a certain type of Puritanism. Many young working class men are beautiful and indescribably sexy - the film puts this at the centre of the equation, so as not to geld the subject.In any case, there is a narrative excuse for the camera's gaze: the story is seen through the eyes of a family friend, who is gay and eventually has a brief affair with the youngest brother, Olive. The affair ends abruptly. The film is no Queer as Folk fantasy. Olive retreats from a love affair in which his femininity can be expressed sexually and freely to become Marc's carer, his femininity giving him his dead mother's place in the family and so becoming helpful, familiar, imprisoned. His lover "escapes" to a "free" urban life in Paris, where people merely want to exploit him for sex. The choices given the film's characters are bleak.Le Clan is slow and elliptical in narrative terms but eventually becomes clear. It is worth sticking with as a complex and honest dissection of working class masculinity.