French Film: My Son (Mon Garçon), Directed by Christian Carion

Mad with anguish and guilt following his son Mathys’s abduction, Julien embarks on a vigilante-style mission to track down his child and bring his kidnappers to justice. Spiralling, frustrated by police red tape and gripped by rampant paranoia, he initially zeroes in on his ex-wife’s new beau whose cavalier attitude to Mathys’s disappearance is more than suspect.

Soon, however, a (Hollywood-ish) hunch sets him back on course, drawing him into the murky world of paedophilia. The nerve-shredding face-off-with-the-baddies sequence is the relentless, edge-of-your-seat stuff most action blockbusters can only aspire to – thanks no doubt to Guillaume Canet’s white-knuckle intensity and raw desperation. Cherry-picking the genre’s juiciest tropes without ever feeling derivative, Mon Garçon is a thriller masterclass.

MY SON (Mon Garçon) will open in cinemas in the U.S. on May 10.
Directed by Christian Carion (Joyeux Noël, Come What May, Farewell)
Written by Christian Carion and Laure Irmann
Starring Guillaume Canet (Tell No One), Mélanie Laurent (Beginners, Inglourious Basterds)

My Son, starring Guillaume Canet and Mélanie Laurent