Discordia

An old fashioned fantasy film which wears its heart on its sleeve and doesn’t care what more cynical audience members might think, Matthieu Reynaert’s Discordia opens with a fairy tale. There once was a woodcutter, it tells us. He lived with his family in the forest, but after his wife died, a strange tribe took his daughter away. He never stopped searching for her. A traditional tale would often end here, but this one has more. 15 years have passed and the woodcutter (Thierry Hellin) remains in the forest, kept there not just by the hope of finding his child, but also by what seems to be the spirit of his dead wife (voiced by Pauline Etienne). We pick up with events as she tells him that there is a stranger in the forest whom he needs to go out and meet.

It’s a dangerous forest. This is only lightly sketched out, but the characters’ complete acceptance of it is as effective as the overwrought explanations often found in similar films. Early scenes in which our hero kills and butchers a deer provide plenty of gore, so that Reynaert can get by with simple effects later on because he’s established how far he’s willing to go. This adds a little something to what are otherwise fairly straightforward fight scenes. The tension in the film comes mostly from uncertainty, however. We’re never quite sure of the real motives of the characters – and then there are the sinister ‘red eyes’, tall, shadowy creatures which slip between the trees at night.

Reynaert keeps things simple, working with a small cast. Viewers won’t be surprised when the stranger turns out to be the long lost daughter, Aerin (Sophie Breyer) – but what does that mean? Why has she returned now? How does she fit into the legacy of her mother’s magic? And is she still herself, in cultural terms, or has she become one of the Iskar?

When a young man (Soufian El Boubsi) turns up and turns out to be Aerin’s betrothed, matters become still more uncomfortable. Can he really be trusted? Can the woodcutter deal with getting his daughter back only to lose her to somebody else? He warns that there are assassins on her trail. For the three of them to have any chance of survival, they must work together and make a stand.

It’s a film with big ambitions and limited means. Reynaert works hard to create a sense of the wider world and give his film some epic quality, but ultimately this is limited by the fact that most of it could have been filmed in somebody’s back garden. Though competent enough at the basics, he doesn’t manage to give the forest that enchanted quality that’s really needed to elevate a story like this. More problematically, he has – like many fantasy filmmakers before him – failed to invest in developing his characters beyond the immediate requirements of the story. The acting is, again, mostly competent, but doesn’t give us a more substantial sense of who they are. As a result, the film feels a bit flat, like an extended short.

These weaknesses are balanced somewhat by the obvious love with which the film has been made. It’s also pleasingly lacking in self-consciousness, which makes its problems easy to forgive. If you’re a fantasy fan looking for something simple but enjoyable, it may well hit the spot.

Reviewed on: 11 May 2025