2023-09-13 09:01:15
by Maurizio Porro
Too many clichés in the Netflix series which sees an ultra-Orthodox family in Antwerp dealing with illegal trafficking
The same Israeli couple who created the best-selling series “Fauda”, Rotem Shamir and Yuval Yefet, are back in the spotlight now with “Rough diamonds”, a Flemish crime story set in an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish family in world of the Antwerp diamond trade which has to answer for its added value to many mafias.
It is an apparently sociological thriller and a story that gains momentum on the sentimental and tangled springboard of a family, the Wolfsons, once powerful and now fallen to the bottom. Many children, among which the star is Noah (unfortunately he is a very mediocre actor, Kevin Janssens), first black sheep and now, after 25 years of London crime, prodigal son, after his younger brother Yanki committed suicide for having led to bankruptcy for illegal trafficking the once most profitable and powerful company in the area.
And here the game of responsibilities, guilt and remorse, few and late, immediately starts: the father still sees poorly the returned son who will be the hero of the 8 episodes of the series on Netflix (since it doesn’t end, a second season is probable) , until dying opens the debate on inheritance which initially involves the scion of the house, the wisest. But the moral is this: such a rich family does not accept decadence and does everything, using less than legal routes and unorthodox methods, making the plot increasingly cumbersome and less plausible, to regain power in an environment of very shady dealings.
A suicide does not do honor to the family in a trafficking of precious stones that sees the Albanian gang at work with a secret bank that launders dirty money. Noah has returned to be a hero and tries to rehabilitate the family fortunes by trying to save the inheritance and the bank account, but he is ensnared in criminal operations, in double and triple games which also see the investigators in the foreground, with threats and blackmail. Some moral diktats of the Jewish family persist, in which only Noah who brings with him his little son Tommy (well done boy Casper Knof, who represents the future), is not observant in any sense.
There are many clichés in the screenplay, in the manner of many gangster films in which the setting of Zionism only serves as a backdrop, as if it were an added element of folklorism, nothing to do with the masterpiece «Shitsel». This is the main sin of a long-winded story that starts well and then settles into well-known entanglements between corruptions of every order and degree, including doubts and resentments, religious values and the role of women (and grandmothers) in the company and among the four Hasidic walls.
And then the romantic additions with Noah who is a womanizer, the betrothed, the friend who will betray and the other doubts and regrets of his brother Eli (Robbie Cleiren, excellent) who continues to sin in a shady way despite attending the synagogue. Produced by Keshet and the Belgian company De Mensen, the product has an easy, repetitive effect, mixes Flemish and Yiddish (but you have to hear it dubbed which is not a positive option) as well as a bit of English and French: too many twists but it’s missing the true power of darkness, the sense of the collapse of a dynastic empire and also of a way of dealing with diamonds in their chosen city.
But the Jewish soul does not marry with the thriller one. Therefore the plot becomes unnecessarily cumbersome, there are too many characters in the economic turmoil of an overbearing family, so the actors had to learn to speak Yiddish. The three siblings Noah, Eli and Adina are played by Belgian actors, while the elders of the family are Israeli actors, starting with the matriarch Yona Elian, often crying and with good reason among the dull Nordic colours.
September 13, 2023 (modified September 13, 2023 | 08:31)
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