The Kingdom review – an intensely exciting and absorbing mob drama

Corsica-set mafia tale boasts outstanding performances from first-time actors as it follows a teenage girl discovering and revelling in her status as the blueblood daughter of a crime bossThere are fierce and overwhelmingly authentic performances here from first-timers in Julien Colonna’s terrific mob drama. The setting is Corsica, around the 1990s, in the coastal region of Ajaccio, famously the home of Napoleon. Lesia (played by nonprofessional Ghjuvanna Benedetti) is a moody 15-year-old girl living with her aunt, hanging out with her friends and boisterous extended family of cousins.School is out for the summer and Lesia appears to be getting into a romance with a local boy. Maybe because of this, or due to other reasons, she is ordered to leave her aunt’s house and go to the luxurious and fortified family compound of her widowed father. This is mob boss Pierre-Paul (superbly played by Saveriu Santucci), a heavy-set, slow-moving but intimidating patriarch who is perhaps displeased with her behaviour, but also gruffly tender and indulgent. Continue reading...

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