On Criterion in April 2021, I watched Claire Denis’ 1990 film No Fear, No Die, a neonoir about two immigrant young men living in France and surviving through the underground world of cockfighting. Dah (Issach de Bankolé) is from Benin, and Jocelyn (Alex Descas) is from the West Indies. The fights are run by a French restaurant owner (Jean-Claude Brialy), who wants to make the fights more brutal to compete with other cockfighting rings around the world, like adding knives to the birds’ spurs, and Jocelyn resents the abuse of the birds and the ugliness of the crowd’s greed to see blood.
I really liked how quiet Descas’ performance was, how he just looks in disgust and seethes and feels stuck in this sordid world, run by a racist and condescending owner who taunts him about having “known” his mother, while trying to figure a way out. In contrast, de Bankolé as Dah, while not loving the place they’re in, is more emotionally removed from it, more just accepting it as it is and putting up with it for the money, giving a “what did you expect?” response to Jocelyn’s resistance to the fights. One can get the sense they’re not great friends, but work together more out of convenience and getting by in underworld gigs.
I really liked this one a lot. It was a small movie, and I usually do like noir and crime movies that focus on small underworld operations, that are hidden from the general world but feel huge in their own way. Like watching Rounders and getting into its depiction of password-protected back room poker games with illegal gambling going on. This had a similar personal feel to it that I really got into it, with some tight lead acting performances by de Bankolé and Descas, and a nice supporting role by Solveig Dommartin (Wings of Desire, Until the End of the World).
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