THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
Dealer opens with a series of short shots, a sort of snapshot that cuts to the quick, marks the retina once and for all. A kid on his bicycle pedals in the night, under the rain and the neon lights of the city. In a building entrance, we see him give a handshake, then two bags of coke to a customer. And here he is again in the saddle. Then on a break, sitting on a low wall, smoking a cigarette, before going to supply other customers.
The kid, whose name is Johnny (Sverre Rous), lets guess under the visor of his cap a small closed face, serious as a pope, almost adult. He is 14 years old and already drags an entire life behind him, the burden of which registers from the first minutes of the image. Loneliness, wandering, dirty dealings, hiding, artificial nights. We won’t get out of it.
The first feature film by rapper, director and actor Jeroen Perceval (who starred in 2011 in Bullhead, by Michaël R. Roskam, in 2015 in The Ardennes, by Robin Pront, and in 2020 in the enemy, by Stephan Streker) is an abrupt, inky black film. He was inspired by the young people he met and observed in the city of Antwerp (Belgium), street kids in search of a better life and role models to cling to. Dealer tells their story in the form of a funeral ballad, slightly affected and quite repetitive. It remains a powerful, rough story, which does not seek to seduce and goes against good feelings.
Two cripples of existence
The latter point however, from time to time, the tip of their nose. The complicity and the love are indeed there, intact, when Johnny – placed in a home since his mother (Hannah Macpherson) is in the grip of violent psychotic episodes – visits her in her studio apartment. She is a painter, her talent has been recognized, she no longer sells, but still believes in it. It is also to help him improve his daily life that the kid, without telling his mother, ended up diving in and becoming a drug dealer on behalf of a boss at the head of an army of clueless kids. The affection also manifests itself when Johnny crosses paths with Anthony (Ben Segers), a famous actor whom an existential crisis precipitates towards the abyss. Between these two life cripples, a bond is established which leads them to make a pact. Together, like father and son, they will try to support each other and get by.
But the world that Jeroen Perceval films – nocturnal wanderings in soulless streets, orgiastic evenings of getting high and having sex, days clouded by grayness and drizzle – leaves little room for hope. The scenes follow one another and are repeated in alternating orange and bluish lighting: a somewhat artificial and dated aesthetic (reminiscent of the cinema of the 1990s), which has the effect of blurring the temporal space to which the film is attached. The contemporary history reported Dealer indeed speaks of a misery that has no age, unchanged for decades.
You have 18.61% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.