Review of The Stone Council

In France, the single translator Diane Siprien (Monica Bellucci) adopts an Asian baby named Liu-San (Nicolas Thau) in a foundation directed by Sybille Weber (Catherine Deneuve). Years later, a weird mark appears on the boy's chest and Diane and Liu share their dreadful nightmares. Diane is assigned for a three-day job in German and she leaves Liu with her friend Sybille. However, while going to the airport, Diane finds Liu hidden in the backseat and startles with an eagle flying toward the windshield, crashing her car. Liu falls into a coma and his digital recorder records the boy speaking in an unknown dialect. When Diane searches the translation and the origins of Liu, she is surrounded by mysterious murders. She discovers that the dialect is from the mystic Mongolian Tseven tribe and that Liu is a powerful Observer; further, he is in danger, threatened by sorcerers that need the boy for their Council of the Stone.

"Le Concile de Pierre" is an intriguing and complex supernatural thriller. However, the story is too long for 102 minutes running time, and the director and the screenwriter use the resource of ellipsis to keep the pace of the movie and a poor development of the characters. What I most like in this movie is that there are very few clichés in the mystic story; the locations in Mongolia and of course the performance of the goddess Monica Bellucci wearing short hairs and very few make-up. My only restriction is to the lack of emotion transmitted by the movie, with a cold narrative. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Ritual da Pedra" ("The Stone Ritual")