Director Gaël Morel (Full Speed) offers a taut, muscu­lar story of three brothers struggling to bring their energy meaningfully into a world that too often ignores, resists, and punishes this burning life force.

Marc, a restless young man in his early twenties, has been deprived of an older man's guidance by his father's recent widowhood and bereavement, and by the imprisonment of his older brother, Christophe. He passes his days in small-time drug transactions and run-ins with local thugs. Newly released from prison, Christophe proves a disappointment as he turns his attention to a solid but soulless job in a meat-packing plant, feeling little empathy for Marc, whose path so strongly resembles his own. The youngest brother, Olivier, witnesses his family's slow spiritual death. Seeking love and connection in the passionate arms of Marc's Arab cohort Hicham, Olivier must face the pos­sibility that even this inroad to the world of men may fail him in the end.

Morel's resonant story (co-written with Christophe Honoré) constructs a symbiotic yet poignantly discon­nected circle of pain, searingly enacted by an arresting trio: Nicolas Cazalé as the incendiary Marc, queer-film stalwart Stéphane Rideau as Christophe, and smoldering young newcomer Thomas Dumerchez as Olivier. While detailing the all-too-common short-circuits that occur between men, the film still adroitly evokes the force that inexorably draws them together in a shared fate.