Disco Boy review – Franz Rogowski adds another dimension to intense French Foreign Legion drama

The German actor’s expressive performance anchors Giacomo Abbruzzese’s bold, continent-crossing feature debut

In Disco Boy, German actor Franz Rogowski speaks Russian and French; a brief glance at his résumé suggests that he’s equally at home working in English, as well as his native German. But in fact, words of any language are almost of secondary importance in a Rogowski performance, so physically expressive is he. Here, his haunted, mercurial face and dancer’s poise are put to particularly impressive use as Aleksei, a Belarusian undocumented immigrant who joins the French Foreign Legion, in the stylistically bold but slightly confounding feature debut from Giacomo Abbruzzese.

Following a fateful military mission, Aleksei finds his life and destiny mystically entwined with that of Jomo (Morr Ndiaye), an armed Nigerian rebel protesting against the oil industry that poisons the Niger Delta. The film is heady, seductive and heavily symbolic in its approach. But while the plot itself is a little nebulous, the atmosphere that Abbruzzese creates, through a hypnotic, pulsing electronic score and Rogowski’s febrile presence, is unnerving and intense.

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