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35 Shots of Rum

35 Shots of Rum (35 rhums)

Movie · 2008 · 13 people

Claire Denis directed 35 Shots of Rum (French: 35 Rhums) and wrote the screenplay with Jean-Pol Fargeau, making a French-German drama in 2008. Its world premiere took place out of competition at the 65th Venice International Film Festival in late August 2008, and it was released in France on February 18, 2009 and in Germany on March 5, 2009. Critics, especially abroad, received it well.

The story unfolds in the Antillean community of the Paris suburbs and centres on Lionel, a widower who raised his daughter Joséphine alone. Alex Descas plays Lionel and Mati Diop plays Joséphine, with Nicole Dogué as the neighbour Gabrielle and Grégoire Colin as Noé. Joséphine is now a young woman and grows close to a taxi driver, while Lionel has met a woman for the first time in years. When the man she is drawn to has to go abroad for work, Lionel sees that his bond with his daughter will loosen, and he agrees to help her find her own path.

Strongly inspired by the films of the Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, it deals with working-class life and family ties. The score is by the English rock band Tindersticks, and the film was produced by Christoph Friedel.

DirectorClaire Denis
35 Shots of Rum (35 rhums)

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Grégoire Colin Grégoire Colin Film actor · 51 years old Adèle Ado Alex Descas Ériq Ebouaney Ingrid Caven Jean-Christophe Folly Mario Canonge Mati Diop Nicole Dogué Stéphane Pocrain Tony Harrisson Djédjé Apali Adama Niane

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Through different eyes

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

You can feel how strongly Claire Denis draws on Ozu, and that is both the film's strength and its limit. The moment a father and daughter begin to part is staged not as loud drama but as a quiet upheaval; the storytelling prefers observing to explaining. Tindersticks' score supports that inward tone. The script by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau keeps dramatic conflict almost deliberately in the background, an economy that rewards patient viewers but may leave anyone expecting a classic plot adrift. The critical warmth is easy to understand: this is the work of a mature director in no hurry to prove anything. Still, the homage to Ozu at times drowns out Denis's own voice.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

The film shows the Antillean community of the Paris suburbs not as a problem or a headline but as people who own their ordinary lives, and that choice alone is notable. Where cinema often links the banlieue with tension and exclusion, here the everyday ties of a working-class father, his daughter and their neighbours come to the fore. A widower who raised his daughter alone learning to accept her independence speaks to a universal stage of generational change in families with migrant roots. That the trigger is a job abroad for the man she is drawn to also quietly reminds us how work and mobility reshape family life.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humour and heart.

A calm film about the bond between a father and his daughter. Don't expect much to happen fast; everything moves at a slow, quiet pace, so young children will most likely get bored. Parents whose children are about to leave home, though, may recognise a lot of themselves here. A good pick to watch with older teenagers and talk about afterwards.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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