The Rest­less – first-look review

Often con­ver­sa­tions around men­tal ill­ness are short-reach­ing; they tend to con­sid­er more palat­able symp­toms or con­di­tions, such as depres­sion and anx­i­ety, and fail to take into account not only the patient them­selves but their loved ones. Liv­ing with a cer­tain dis­or­der can have far-reach­ing ram­i­fi­ca­tions for fam­i­lies and friends, mak­ing rela­tion­ships dif­fi­cult to main­tain and actions hard to explain. 

In Joachim Lafosse’s fam­i­ly dra­ma The Rest­less, the Bel­gian direc­tor explores how one man’s bipo­lar dis­or­der casts a long shad­ow on the life he shares with his wife and young son.

Damien (Damien Bon­nard) is a tal­ent­ed painter but claims he works best when he’s not tak­ing his med­ica­tion. The man­ic peri­ods he expe­ri­ences are times of immense pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and inspi­ra­tion, but also take quite a toll on Leïla (Leïla Bekhti) and Amine (Gabriel Merz Chammah) as well as his rela­tion­ship with his father. He stays up for days, intrudes on his son’s class­room, and makes a scene at a local bak­ery; inevitably the mania is fol­lowed by cata­ton­ic depres­sion for which Damien has to be hos­pi­talised, leav­ing Leïla to care for their son as well as work­ing on her fur­ni­ture restora­tion business.

It’s a heart­break­ing­ly famil­iar sto­ry for those who have expe­ri­ence with bipo­lar dis­or­der, and also suc­cess­ful sheds a light on how deeply cru­el the ill­ness can be. Damien is stuck between a rock and a hard place – his med­ica­tion has unpleas­ant side effects but with­out it he often los­es con­trol. An inci­dent where he dri­ves reck­less­ly with his son in the car is a line in the sand for Leïla, who begins to think she may have to leave him for the sake of their child. 

Yet Lafos­se is care­ful to high­light the lov­ing side of their rela­tion­ship, and that the fam­i­ly has many plea­sur­able expe­ri­ences togeth­er. Cru­cial­ly, Damien’s ill­ness does not define him but rather com­pli­cates matters. 

As the title implies, The Rest­less buzzes with a ner­vous sort of ener­gy; as in Damien’s man­ic peri­ods it feels like any­thing could hap­pen. Although Bonnard’s per­for­mance is the stand­out for its phys­i­cal­i­ty and under­stand­ing of bipo­lar dis­or­der, Bekhti match­es him all the way. We feel her immense pain, frus­tra­tion and love, often in the same breath as she tries to shoul­der the respon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ing for her hus­band as well as their son. 

A sense of uncer­tain­ty lingers even with the film’s con­clu­sion, which reflects the real­i­ty of men­tal ill­ness being a con­stant work in progress for those involved. It’s an emo­tion­al but nev­er over­wrought dra­ma, and puts to bed the idea that genius­es always have to suf­fer for their art.

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