The young kid of the cinema is ramming his way up to the top

Rating: 10/10 (3 September 2007)

Pirates are Johnny Depp's curse for ever and even when he becomes a Lord in late Victorian London he manages do choose the author of Peter Pan and thus gets some Captain Hook to shake his hand. But his role is a composition of the best and most difficult type, the type of stunts you don't need a stuntman to do in your place. The film is a real gem for two main reasons. First of all because it is a love story in a time when love was some kind of forbidden goods in the aristocracy. And the love story is so pure, so beyond any doubt that he avoids melodrama when death decides to play his own game with that Johnny who invades the widowed mother's life a little bit too much. Dramatic but not tear-wringing. And the second reason of the beauty of that film is also the reason why it remains feeling intense without being heart rending or heart breaking. The whole film is centered on a bunch of boys and brothers and Peter is so young that we are amazed by his being so present, so good, so mature in his performance. He does not miss a word, a sentiment or an emotion and his so deep acting touches us a lot more than the obstinacy of Death to come and take away what he considers his owed property. And all the rest is nothing but the clothing and beefing up of that power. Johnny Depp becomes a real prodigy in this composition and he looks so serious that we forget the genial clown he is quite often in other films. Peter Pan is a legend and his author is like the Peter of Heavens, the guide and majordomo of our imagination who can introduce us to what real spiritual happiness can be. And we discover we are still able to dream because somewhere the film wakes up the child or even the baby who has never died completely in our life of needs and wants and remembers the cradle that a motherly hand was rocking in a regular and powerful rolling that has inspired our most intimate desires as soon as we were big enough to sleep flat on our stomach in an adult bed. Regular and religious rhythm of that rocking. The religion of coming out of the dream to wake up in a sunny world of pure tenderness.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines