Astrakan puts us in the shoes of Samuel, an orphan who has been taken in by a moderately-sized family. His foster mother, Marie, is wistful despite her sunny personality and his father, Clément, is soft spoken but also quick to anger. Director David Depesseville taps into something that feels deeply personal when chronicling Samuel’s experiences. The more he encounters various chaotic circumstances that he finds himself in the midst of, the more he’s convinced he may be the sole cause. His foster parents constantly talk about him in Samuel’s presence, often mentioning how hard he is to raise. Samuel doesn’t know what to do with this information, and when he tries to ease their burden the effect he intends falls flat.
When a schoolmate of Samuel’s visits and asks to play with him, he begins to undergo a social transformation of sorts. There are a few levels to his relationship with Hélène, his classmate, like his unmistakable attraction towards her the day they first spend time together. His sense of self shifts after one day they watch part of a film that Hélène chooses but stops once it becomes overtly sexual but not explicit just yet, triggering an awakening between the two of them. It’s at about this point in Samuel’s journey that the feeling of reality in Astrakan solidifies, and Samuel’s wearisome way of navigating his adolescence is infectious. It becomes possible to be lulled into a trance until it is too late to escape from danger, the film’s sense of ellipsis puts us strangely at ease for the most part, watching without alarm yet still aware of the world of darkness Samuel is heading towards.
There are a series of recurring moments of Samuel at the stovetop in his family’s house, heating milk in a saucepan and watching it to keep it from scalding. His family makes regular trips out to a family farmhouse to replenish their supply of milk at home, assumedly among other foods while making it somewhat of a social visit to his foster mother’s brother and their mother. Milk is a recurring image in Astrakan and is no doubt a metaphor for motherhood and the absence of such for Samuel. But it also doesn’t quite belong. It is a substance not meant for us yet the more people consume milk, the more acceptable it seems for everyone to do so too. In the way that this is a staple in the diet of Samuel’s new family, in another reality it may have been poisonous. There are numerous instances between Samuel and his foster family that suggest they all seem to think he doesn’t belong either, but they take on a faithful attitude with him. The longer they keep him under their wing, the more like family he’ll become.
During a trip to the family farm, Samuel’s foster uncle, Luc, shows Samuel his room, blanketed with posters of various cars, motorbikes, and other vehicles taken from magazine pages that cover every inch of the walls. It’s an environment that doesn’t seem altogether fitting for a man of Luc’s age, and he takes a kind of childish pride in how he’s tailored his own space of the house. There is an unspoken history between his uncle and Samuel’s older foster brother that the family does not understand or even notice; their father Clément fails to grasp the real reason why his son needs him to install a slide lock on the inside of his door, yet he does it with Samuel’s help nevertheless.
There’s a moment in the churchyard where Samuel notices plain crosses marking the graves of unnamed dead. He asks his foster father why they lack names, and he responds that they had no family when they passed away in the nearby hospital, so their identities were unknown. Samuel begins to perceive a divide: his foster family as a whole believes family is intrinsic to personal identity, but Samuel’s identity started to form independently in the wake of his parent’s death before being adopted, along with a sense of maturity that has not had time to fully develop. Samuel knows he is not organically of his foster family and cannot choose to leave or change families. The family who has taken him in doesn’t want to give him up despite their constant verbalizations of how difficult Samuel is to take care of, let alone control.
Astrakan is drawn on 1968’s Naked Childhood and puts a heavy focus on Samuel being so relatable to us despite the confusing actions he takes. Not a one of us can say that in our own childhoods did we never choose to do something so confounding to those raising us or in our lives at some capacity. But the reason we did these embarrassing things, no matter what they were, is attention. In Samuel’s case, hearing his name used in his presence as if he’s not there conditions him to feel devoid of love or unworthy of attention. Every child has a fear of their family abandoning them, and Samuel is no exception. It has happened to him once before, and the church’s unmarked graves provide a symbolic destination that feels all too possible for him. But this time of his life sees one awakening after another, during the climax of the film it feels like something is finally about to give in Samuel’s life. All he needs to do is step forward, claim it, and bring it into being.
Astrakan is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of Altered Innocence with additional expansion planned in the coming weeks.
"Astrakan" offers an intimate and thought-provoking journey into the life of Samuel, an orphan adopted by a complex family. Director David Depesseville skillfully explores the intricate dynamics within Samuel's foster family, where his mother, Marie, exudes wistfulness beneath her sunny demeanor, and his father, Clément, struggles to balance a soft-spoken nature with bursts of anger.
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GVN Rating 8
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Andre is an avid film watcher, blogger and podcaster. You can read their words on film at letterboxd and medium, and hear their voice on movies, monsters, and other weird things on Humanoids From the Deep Dive every other Monday. In their “off” time they volunteer as a film projectionist, reads fiction & nonfiction, comics, and plays video games until it’s way too late.