Magnus by Kadri Kõusaar

Shunted between the plump arms of a heroin-addict father and a vulgarly made-up mother who works as a madam in a brothel, Magnus is a boy dreamer who, suffering from diseased lungs, somehow repeatedly manages to cheat death. Years later, cured, Magnus has not stopped playing with the Grim Reaper, despite everything. He continues to set himself childish dares in order to persuade himself that he won’t die that very day. An enthusiast of all kinds of illicit substances, Magnus (played by the magnetic Kristjan Kasearu) cares little for social manners or taboos. Does he not after all even propose cunnilingus to his own (apparently lesbian) sister between two puffs of crack ?

Casually suicidal, one day he takes an overdose. Failed. Hospital-bound. Sheltered by his father, this post-adolescent is forced to rediscover his taste for life. Except the method used here is anything but ordinary. On the programme : smoking joints, taking acid and visits to brothels. The destination and point of no return before the final swallow dive : a forest at the heart of Hiiumaa Island, for one last father-son encounter. Sometimes, the characters in Magnus struggle to move us, as if they were confined to an overly demonstrative and even monotonous marginality. The Estonia filmed by Kadri Kõusaar at least has the merit of being unusual : by turns realist, surreal, dark, hallucinogenic. Poetically incorrect.

Emilie Padellec