(2.5 / 5)
Late at night, the psychologist Eliane Hess is called to the hospital to take care of Yves, an eight-year-old boy, who just has lost his parents and siblings in a car accident. As time goes by, she loses the professional distance to the patient, and when Yves’ relatives begin a heavy dispute about the boy’s future, Eliane makes an unorthodox decision, that throws her life off track.
If you are looking for an intense film that is dark, suspenseful and keeps you at the edge of your seat, this is not it.
A young boy named Yves (Noé Ricklin) ends up in the hospital after surviving a car crash that kills his entire family and a therapist by the name of Eliane (Eleni Haupt) is called in to help him. As Yves starts to recover, he begins to reveal more and more things about his family. As the time gets closer to his release, Eliane has to find him a suitable home and is contacted by his grandmother and his aunt who both want custody.
This is where things go downhill for the film. We are now introduced to two characters, his grandmother, which is his father’s mother and his aunt, who is his mother’s sister. Both fiercely want to take the boy and we don’t know why. It is advised to Eliane not to give custody to the aunt and Yves confirms that he does not want to be with her because of her relationship with the dad, making her seem suspicious. They make a big deal out of this when it really ends up having nothing to do with the story anyway.
Meanwhile, a great deal of the movie focuses on Eliane’s personal life. She is a single mother of two girls, Alice (Chiara Carla Bär), a high school student who is always cursing at her, and the other one, Helen (Elisa Plüss), seems to be more of a sister. Apparently, Helen is from the first marriage and it is revealed that her father had an affair. Then as the movie progresses we find out that the father of Alice had an affair too. Why someone thought this would be important to the movie, I have no idea.
Eleni Haupt, Noé Ricklin, Elisa Plüss & Chiara Carla Bär in Dark Fortune (2016).
At this point, you are still wondering what and who caused this car accident, what’s going to happen to this little boy. While you are patiently waiting for something, anything to be exciting, scary, or even shocking, Eliane brings Yves to her home to care for him temporarily. Of course, we already knew that would happen! He starts displaying normal kid behavior like talking to his toys but weare led to believe this is something to pay attention to because maybe at some point it will make sense but it doesn’t. Most kids talk to their toys so it adds nothing original nor does it scare us, if that was the point.
So basically, after two painful hours, we find out that Yves’s parents were fighting in the car. The dad hit the mom and Yves was in the back seat hoping he would stop. He grabbed the dad from behind which caused the accident. The End! I do believe there was a lot of effort put into this film but it feels like something I’ve seen before where the child is the one secretly guilty. It has the slight feel of “The Bad Seed” but nowhere nearly as well done. The cast was great but not together. I didn’t for a second believe they were family and I didn’t buy Yves’ relatives as family either. I also found it hard to believe that this little boy just lost his whole family because there weren’t many emotions on his end. Sure there were a few tears but I just didn’t buy it.
This movie had way too many unnecessary side stories. We didn’t have to know anything personal about Eliane for this to work, nor did we have to suspect the aunt. Okay movie but missed every mark it tried to hit.
Now available on DVD
