The Lost Son (1999)
Xavier Lombard is a world-weary private eye in London, in exile from his native Paris; his best friend is Nathalie, a high-class call girl. He gets a call from an old friend from the Paris police department, now a businessman whose brother-in-law is missing. The missing man's parents hire Xavier over their daughter's objections, and quickly he finds himself in the realm of children's sexual slavery.
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How sad is this?
Great Film overall
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
In The Lost Son, a private eye searching for a missing man stumbles upon a child prostitution ring. This film incorporates all of the worst stereotypes you could imagine in a worst-case scenario that exists only in the minds of Hollywood, the press and AG John Asscrap. If you get a chance to see this, you'd be better off getting lost yourself.
Saw this film late night on cable. The story really draws you in. Enjoyable tense drama with a disturbing subject matter. Daniel Auteuil does a very believable job as the private investigator caught up in a case deeper and darker than he expected. A tad predictable at the end but over all a good film.
Taking a subject as controversial as paedophilia and attempting to build a routine detective story around it is prone to failure, not least because it is very easy to appear sensational and exploitative. Having said that 'The Lost Son' doesn't fall down on that count, but instead disappoints because it isn't bold enough. For two thirds of the film we have the basis of a great detective story, which only falters when the director feels the need to throw in a few heroics, and sentimentalities. When Lombard delivers the saved children, by truck, into the arms of the priest, he's almost saint-like - and it's just a bit too trite. I was also letdown by the 'twist' ending, which was totally expected. Shot mostly on location in London, the film captures the claustrophobia and loneliness of Lombard's existence since the death of his wife and child, the catalyst for his own need to run away. Moving the action to Mexico destroys the sense of isolation and spoils the flow of the film immensely. Auteil's performance as the hard-bitten private investigator veers away from cliche because you really can believe in this man's story. He himself is a 'lost son', searching for some meaning to exorcise his own demons, and sorting out other people's problems while trying to bury his own. It is telling that his only real friend is a prostitute, and his life tends to revolve around those close to the 'business' he so ardently abhors.'The Lost Son' isn't an easy film to watch, and doesn't deliver on all it promises, with a tendency to favour flashiness over a fleshed out story. But worth seeing, nonetheless.
Auteuil is magnificent as the French loner who has somehow become a lost soul among the shadows of London's West End. The private detective, who discovers the cracks in his own life though an investigation that leads him through the seedy underworld of the child prostitution trade, takes us through the shoking stages of his discovery with much suspense. One of the best modern detective stories to have been filmed in London for many years and a film that deserves much better attention than it got when first released.