Tag: france

Agent Zero

  By

★★½
“Shaky, in a number of ways.”

Alma Siracine (Vacth) was a black ops agent for the French government, until an assignment in Syria went pear-shaped, and she resigned her position. Seven years later, she’s living quietly with her policeman husband in Morocco, until he’s the victim of a drive-by shooting. She finds the attackers and terminates them. Unfortunately, they are the sons of local arms dealer Manour Khoury (Dazi). Not helping, he is under the protection of the French government, being allowed to operate in exchange for funneling information to them about terrorist attacks. Spymaster Joanna Walter (Bercot) decides Alma is a loose end in need of tidying. Alma, naturally, is of a different opinion, and won’t be easy to clean up.

The main problem here is de Fontenay’s fondness for shakycam in the action sequences. Not just one or two. It feels like every time anyone moves at a pace quicker a walk, the camera immediately starts to have some kind of seizure. It’s clearly a tactic designed to instill a sense of immediacy. Paul Greengrass used it to great effect in the Bourne movies. But it isn’t just a case of taking a handheld camera and waving it around. You need an editor who can assemble the footage into a coherent format. Sadly, that’s what is absent here, and the results are usually difficult to follow, and on occasion liable to induce a headache. 

Consequently, I found myself almost dreading the appearance of an action sequence. Not exactly a good thing to experience during an action movie. Whether it was her brutally efficient dispatch of Khoury’s sons, a motorcycle chase through the streets of the seaside town where she lives, or the final battle with Khoury’s men at the port in Casablanca, the approach is the same. It feels like a throwback – and a most unwelcome one at that – to the style of action cinema popular twenty years ago. I thought we had moved on. Apparently not. The film is (literally) on more solid ground when depicting the murky world of international espionage, where pragmatic decisions are made without consideration of the moral concerns. I actually have some sympathy for Walter and her almost impossible situation. 

Outside of the camerawork, the technical elements are generally fine. The film makes decent use of its Moroccan and Middle East locations, and Dazi makes for a decent villain, believing himself untouchable, regardless of what he does. However, the overall structure feels off in some way, and the film just seems to end in a way likely to provoke a “Well, that happened” reaction in the viewer. Vacth has some effective moments, and the film never totally lost my attention. But it did teeter on the edge more than once, especially when it made me feel like I had contracted an inner-ear disorder. Those with a stronger stomach than I might find more to enjoy here. Wouldn’t necessarily bet on it though.

Dir: Guillaume de Fontenay
Star: Marine Vacth, Emmanuelle Bercot, Slimane Dazi, Niels Schneider
a.k.a. Badh

Pink

  By

★½
“Too many episodes, spoil the broth.”

This has something of an interesting history. It was originally 35 episodes of a short-form web series, shown on Hulu, beginning back in 2007, at the time when they were just starting out. That may seem like a lot of content, but each episode was only three to five minutes long. So what you have here is a compilation of all those episodes into a single movie, running about two hours. And… unfortunately, the result is a complete mess, bouncing around in time without rhyme, reason or purpose. It spends too much time on things which don’t matter much, like silly college shenanigans, while galloping past – if addressing at all – matters which feel more important to the plot.

From what I could figure out (and I can by no means swear to any of this), the basic plot involves Natalie Cross (Raitano). She was brought up by her single father (Tompkins), who was a special forces operative. Or maybe black ops. It’s all very murky. As a result, she basically got Hanna‘d, learning all the skills necessary to follow in her father’s footsteps. Initially, she tries to be her own person, but while at college was recruited to work for a BLOC: a black ops corporation, private military who handle jobs governments want done with clean hands. After quitting, Nate found herself in prison, but is now back on the outside, having been promised freedom if she completes ten assignments.

That would be fine. Except, for whatever reason, the show spends far too much time and effort with college-aged Nate (Matula), which is very much the least interesting thing the show has to offer. Except possibly her “Gother than thou” room-mate, Rhonda, who naturally is the person to show the sheltered Nate the ways of the world. Well, the ones that don’t involve hunting and skinning deer, anyway. But who cares? If I wanted to watch that kind of thing, I would… Well, I guess I would watch that kind of thing. You get the idea. The series only achieves energy after Nate goes to work full-time for her BLOC, and is given a little apprentice, Bunny (a nice nod back to Nate’s childhood pet).

I get that the show was made in bite-sized episodes, and it might have worked better in that format. Or, alternatively, if they had shuffled them around for this feature version, into something closer to chronological order. Instead, the results here resemble somebody having fed the footage through a shredder, and then arbitrarily assembled it back together. It means on occasion, you’ll have adjacent scenes taking place decades apart, and on different continents. There was a time, fifteen or more years ago, when this kind of thing was seen as the future of entertainment on the Internet. The failure of things like Quibi proved otherwise. Based on the evidence here, it’s a mercy that never came to pass.

Dir: Blake Calhoun
Star: Natalie Raitano, Sheree J. Wilson, Kim Matula, Matthew Tompkins

Pacific Fear

  By

★★½
“Surfing birds.”

At the beginning of this, I wondered if I was watching a Godzilla film. Because it opens with atomic bomb footage, depicting French test in the Pacific. We know what this leads to: gigantic lizards with fiery bre… Oh, hang on: it’s actually a group of women, looking for a place reputed to have particularly gnarly (if my knowledge of beach-speak doesn’t fail me, and it probably does) waves. There are three surfers, plus photographer Sarah (Galloy), who has been out of the game since an accident which wrecked her confidence. The island they find isn’t on any map, so it must be good, and not a death-trap waiting to happen to them. Right?

The problems occur when they stumble across a maraé, a sacred site to the locals (giving the film is alternate title). One of the women has native ancestry, so conveniently knows about this, and why disturbing it would be a Very Bad Idea Indeed. Guess who doesn’t listen? That’d be another of the women. Their next surfing session is interrupted by a hungry shark, and when the survivors struggle ashore, they are immediately met by a group of hostile tribespeople. Oh, and a former soldier, the General (Recoing), who seems to have stayed behind after the tests out of guilt. He has gone a bit Colonel Kurtz, to drop an Apocalypse Now reference, and the captured women are now in deep trouble. As in potential human sacrifices.

The main positive here is excellent photography, both above and below the water. The scenery is lovely, and it’s captured beautifully. If you’re not thinking about booking a holiday to Tahiti by the mid-way point, you have not been paying attention. However, everything else is kinda lacklustre, not helped by dubbing where the main direction given to the English voice actors seems to have been, “Make it flatter! Less interesting!” As villains, the combination of locals and Frenchmen are awkward too. It feels like the makers didn’t want to go the “savage foreigners” route, as in Eli Roth’s Green Inferno. Yet they ended up instead making them subservient to the General, which could be seen as even more condescending.

As for the women, Sarah is the only one given much depth, courtesy of her history. While the accident may not prove significant in terms of the plot, it does make her seem a genuine person, and it’s more than the other three get. Once things get going (and it takes a while)t, it becomes a reasonable entry in the wilderness survival sub-genre, though the scene of her jumping into a waterfall to escape her pursuers is either bad CGI, or shot so badly it looks like CGI. I’d have liked to have seen her go full Rambo, using her environment against her enemies, but realistically, that would be a stretch for a surfer turned photographer. There are a couple of moments of moderate gory violence, but not a lot of emotional impact. You’ll likely leave with little more than a shrug. 

Dir: Jacques Kluger
Star: Adèle Galloy, Marie Zabukovec, Marilyn Lima, Aurélien Recoing
a.k.a. Maraé

Country House

  By

★★½
“Well, that’s different.”

The title above is the one by which it appeared on Tubi, though everywhere else calls it Aggression. I guess both are appropriate, in different ways. Neither shed a great deal of light on proceedings here. Then again, you could argue, the film itself is largely deficient in the area of enlightenment too. It takes place in rural France, where Sarah (Nicklin) has been reunited with her sister Marie (Duchez), after twelve years living in England. The circumstances are not happy, the visit being the result of their father’s death. However, there appears to be a dark past surrounding the circumstances of Sarah’s departure. Meanwhile, Marie is mute, although this does not play into the scenario which unfolds. 

After a chunk of small-scale family drama, things kick off with a home invasion staged by Chris (Torriani) and his colleague (Jacquet), who doesn’t seem to have a name. As is common in these cases, one of the criminals is “nice”, while the other is a psycho. And similarly, Marie is timid, and inclined to run, while Sarah is… not. I probably don’t want to say much more, even if simply by not saying more, I am in fact… saying more. Let’s just add, the original title becomes considerably more relevant. That, alone, would be something we’ve seen before in the home invasion genre. However, it’s just the start, because things go entirely off the deep end, in terms of motivation especially.

Just do not expect anything orbiting in the same solar system of a coherent explanation. The only other review of this I could find (in French) called this a giallo. After a first half where I was very hard-pushed to spot the similarity, I can see where that’s coming from. It has the same air of unfiltered madness, as well as suddenly switching to a lurid colour scheme, which makes as much sense as the plot i.e. none at all. One second, a scene will be lit in neon blue; the next shot, taking place in the same location, will be mint green. You could say this is a striking and brave choice of artistic palette. Or you could say it’s pretentious bollocks. I’d not argue either way. 

It is, I suspect, the first Lovecraftian home-invasion movie. Admittedly, after watching it, you may well understand why this is the case. I did like Nicklin, who has been seen here previously in Sister Wrath, and does the best she can in terms of selling the insanity inherent in the script. I could potentially have enjoyed the madness, had it bothered at least to attempt an explanation. Instead, the lack of anything close comes over as lazy film-making. I do appreciate a good swerve, and this undeniably ends up somewhere very different from what I was expecting. However, when you unexpectedly pull the rug out from under your audience, you need also to provide somewhere for them to land.

Dir: Rick Jacquet
Star: Sarah Nicklin, Marie Duchez, Cédric Torriani, Rick Jacquet
a.k.a. Aggression

Blast

  By

★★★
“Not a bomb.”

To some extent, Sonia (Arnezeder) is the very antithesis of an action heroine here. For she spends the vast bulk of the ninety minute running-time, sitting in the driver’s seat of her car. Admittedly, this is for good reason, because somebody has wired an anti-tank mine into the car’s circuitry, in a number of diabolical ways. There’s a countdown timer, anti-tamper device and it’s also liable to be triggered if the weight in the car drops below a certain amount. Making matters worse, her two kids are in the back. The reason is because of her work in bomb disposal, part of a charity that disarms mines in the Ukraine, a task which has made her certain enemies.

Fortunately, she’s not alone. Her other half, Fred (Kiwitt), is there for moral support, and – probably more helpfully – colleagues from her agency are also present, in particular Igor (Bukvic) and Camile (Mortensen). Together with Sophie, they have to figure out both a solution to the immediately explosive situation, and find out who’s responsible. There are no shortage of candidates, and no shortage of strong female characters either, even beyond Sophie and Camile. These are involved on both sides of the scenario, as it eventually turns out. Though I must confess, I’m a little uncertain about the motivation of those involved. In particular, why the rather complex approach taken here, was deemed to be the most appropriate method. Sometimes, simpler is better, when it comes to evil plans.

That said, it’s a film which doesn’t hang about. Barely a couple of minutes pass before Sophie and her kids are sealed in, with a literal ticking clock. Though we do know this won’t be the end, because the countdown is for only half an hour, it sets the tone early. Peirani-Vignes then does a solid job of keeping the tension high, for the rest of the way. Every time you think you know where this is heading, the script, by the director and Pablo Barbetti, finds a new wrinkle to go in a different direction. As noted, I… have questions about some aspects. However, these did not stop me from remaining engaged, in particular during the front two-thirds of the film.

It did seem to struggle down the stretch. You know there’s inevitably going to be some heroic sacrifice needed. It wasn’t the character I expected: a bit of a mixed blessing, because I really wanted to see them get some degree of payback and/or redemption. Considering the entire movie takes place in an underground car-park, it feels impressively unrestricted, and the calm behaviour of the players is in sharp contrast to the ever-looming lethality of the situation. You will probably learn more than a little about the art and science of bomb disposal. While I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the information, it has the ring of plausibility. In the context of a thriller such as this, sounding legit is what matters. 

Dir: Vanya Peirani-Vignes
Star: Nora Arnezeder, Pierre Kiwitt, Radivoje Bukvic, Sara Mortensen
a.k.a. Déflagrations

After Blue

  By

★★½
“WTF?”

No, really. What we have here may well be the most bemusing film I’ve ever reviewed on the site. It almost exists in an alternate dimension, where concepts such as “good” or “bad” have no meaning. This simply is, and it’s entirely up to you to deal with it. This takes place in a future where humanity was driven off Earth to find other habitable planets. The titular one here had a nasty side-effect, in that it killed off all the men: “Their hairs grew inside because of the atmosphere.” Wait, what? Anyway, it’s now matriarchal, and living in small communities based on nationality. There appears to be some friction between France and Poland, and it’s key to what happens.

On the beach one day, Roxy (Luna) discovers a woman (Buzek) buried up to her neck. Rescuing her proves a mistake, because she kills Roxy’s three friends before departing. Turns out she was a criminal the Poles buried there so she’d drown, and is called Katajena Bushovsky. Or Kate Bush for short, which eventually leads to unforgettable lines like, “You shaved Kate Bush an hour ago.” This is not a sentence I expected to hear when I woke up this morning. [What the director has against body hair, Polish people and Kate Bush, remains positively opaque.] For Roxy’s sins, she and her mother, Zora (Löwensohn), are sent to the mountain which is Kate’s hideout, meeting and/or fighting a slew of wild and weird characters along the way.

It’s considerably less coherent than the above makes it seem, feeling like a fever dream filtered through far too many French bandes dessinées. There are some cool elementsL the hats frequently worn by the women (top) seem to have been bought of the rack at Pinky Violence R Us, and the guns are named after fashion labels. “I’ll shoot with my Gucci. It can put a hole through rock, through wood, through bones,” is also not a subtitle I expected to read. If you are into the works of someone like Panos Cosmatos, you might enjoy this. I, however, am not, and at a hundred and twenty-nine minutes, I must confess my full attention tapped out, with about thirty still to go.

However, that is considerably further than I expected. This was something I threw on, thinking I’d discover it was nothing but pretentious art-wank, bail quickly, and pretend it never existed. Yet here I am, writing a review. It probably is nothing but pretentious art-wank, to be clear. Yet there is something to be said for a film-maker who gets to unleash his fully unfettered imagination onto the screen. How it got funded, is another question: laundering drug money would seem a plausible explanation. Then again, it’s French, so… /Gallic shrug. This certainly is not a film I would recommend, and being made to watch it again could be seen as cruel and unusual punishment. But I didn’t feel my time was entirely wasted.

Dir: Bertrand Mandico
Star: Paula Luna, Elina Löwensohn, Vimala Pons, Agata Buzek
a.k.a. Dirty Paradise

Hunting Day

  By

★★
“I am very confused.”

I like to think I am not an idiot. I can assemble words into a coherent order, perform fairly complex mental arithmetic with reasonable accuracy, and recently connected a printer to my wife’s computer on the first attempt. So, when I tell you I did not understand this film… I really did not understand this film. I’ve seen movies before, where I may be unclear on some points. But I could still provide a reasonably detailed synopsis. Here? I am utterly at sea, beyond the most basic level, to the point I’m wondering how the heck I will be able to reach my standard five hundred words. How many can I spend describing my bemusement?

I do have to admire the fact the film unfolds entirely without dialogue.  Not a single word. It’s the kind of brave artistic choice which deserves respect. However, I have to say, it likely hurts the film more than it helps, and ends up feeling like an artistic conceit. Going by the IMDb, co-writer/director Patrice has no other credits beyond being executive producer, on a film currently in post-production. Yet this kind of gimmick movie screams out for someone with experience and a firm grasp of cinematic language. Somebody with a proven capacity for telling a story with dialogue. You need to work up to this kind of thing, otherwise you will potentially be leaving both yourself and, more importantly, the viewer, adrift and confused.

The IMDb synopsis is: “Deep in a threatening forest, Sarah faces off with the brutal hunter who killed her sister. Its a cat and mouse fight for survival.” No argument there. It’s just the large amount of stuff going around the edges, from which my confusion stems. For example, not long after Sarah (Huet) arrives in the forest, she starts seeing a young girl in a sheep’s head mask. Is that supposed to be her sister? If so, does this indicate Sarah is barking mad? In turn, would that mean nothing else we see or hear is trustworthy? Not least at the end, things spiral off into a resolution which is not, followed by a post-credit moment that then throws everything into doubt.

It all simply left me with too many questions, though other elements were fine. This is nicely photographed, and Huet does as much as she can, without words to express herself. The same goes for Duez as her (dead?) sister, and Bardoul, in the role of the hunter. But another seeming misstep is Patrice’s decision to tell the story out of chronological order. I’m unclear what he was trying to achieve with this, but the net result was another element coming between the audience, and any emotional reaction to events as they unfold. I tried. I really did, to the point I watched this twice (at a 72-minute running time, it could have been worse). In the end though, I’m convinced of one thing: I’m not the problem here. 

Dir: Julien Patrice
Star: Clothilde Huet, Cloe Duez, Steve Bardoul

Apaches: Gang of Paris

  By

★★★
“Creuser deux tombes”

I guess the title is trying to riff off Gang’s of New York, though this is set significantly later. It begins in 1884, when the Apache gang run the Parisian underworld. Young orphans Billie, Paulie and Tricky are on the fringes, until Tricky is killed when forced to play Russian roulette by the gang’s leader, Jésus (Schneider). Billie is framed for the death by a corrupt cop, and spends fifteen years in jail. When she gets out, now a grown woman, Billie (Isaaz) seeks revenge on all those responsible for Tricky’s death, infiltrating the Apaches to get close to Jésus. Matters are complicated, by the presence in the gang of Paulie (Paradot), who was brought up by Jésus, and also by the seductive nature on her of the Apache lifestyle. 

There’s a fair bit of truth to the history here. From what I’ve read, the Apaches were a force to be reckoned with in Paris, from about the turn of the century through the outbreak of World War I. They valued style as much as savagery, preying on the middle- and upper-classes. I’ve not been able to find any indication women were a significant part of the Apaches, beyond using prostitutes as decoys to lure and distract the intended targets of a mugging. Still, can’t argue Billie makes the necessary impression, stabbing the Paris police chief (who is also the man who framed her) to death in a cinema, when she was indeed supposed just to be there as bait.

To this point, the film has done well at generating the atmosphere of a wild, anarchic setting, and populating it with interesting characters. It even manages to overcome the deliberate use of anachronistic songs on the soundtrack, opening up with the not-so sultry 1880’s sounds of… um, Iggy Pop? The problem is, the further in we and Billie get, the less interested she appears to be in her vengeance. The turning point might be when she goes after someone who has abandoned the Apache lifestyle entirely. My reaction to this was, “Oh. Is that it?” – and not for the last time either. You may well find yourself saying the same thing when the end credits abruptly roll.

The problem is less her diversion from revenge, than the absence of anything significant to replace it. I’m usually the last person to want romance in a genre film, but that would at least have helped explain her growing indifference to something which clearly sustained Billie through her fifteen years in jail. The nearest is when Paulie tries to kiss her and she repels her advances. It’s only when Jésus gives her an order she can’t obey, that Billie remembers why she’s there, though what results is hardly redemptive. I’ve read the budget was 4.5 million Euros, and if that’s true, I’m very impressed, since it looks consistently good. With a decent lead performance too, it feels they were just half a script short of having a successful feature.

Dir: Romain Quirot
Star: Alice Isaaz, Niels Schneider, Rod Paradot, Artus

[A version of this review previously appeared on Film Blitz]

Furies: Season one

  By

★★★½
“Hell hath no Furies…”

Not to be mixed up with Furie, The Furies or even Furies – the last of which also showed up on Netflix recently. Confusion seems almost inevitable (and I’m not helping, by largely recycling the tagline for Furie). However, those three are all films – two Vietnamese, one Australian – while this is an eight episode TV series from France. It begins with Lyna Guerrab (El Arabi) living a fairly idyllic, and certainly well-heeled life, with no bigger issue than whether or not to marry her cop boyfriend Elie (Nadeau). Things get upended in no uncertain fashion, when her accountant father is assassinated. Turns out, he kept the books for certain criminal organizations, and someone wanted him very dead.

Lyna vows to find whoever was responsible for her father’s demise, and make them responsible. That opens up a whole can of worms, as she has to venture into the domain of the Parisian criminal underworld, which is far more expansive and influential than expected. To a degree, it feels like the system shown in the John Wick franchise, with six crime families, working in different areas, e.g. prostitution, robbery, etc. who govern things and make sure nobody does anything that would upset their highly lucrative apple-cart. As their collective enforcer is a woman, Selma (Fois), known as the Fury, a hereditary position, passed down the matriarchal line, and she has the skills to keep everyone else in line.

Or does she? Because as Lyna enters the game, it becomes apparent that someone is out to disturb the balance of the system. Coming under the Fury’s patronage, as a possible successor, may not be enough to save her from the war which is becoming increasingly inevitable. As well as John Wick, there are quite a few elements here which feel inspired by Luc Besson in one way or another: the world-weary assassin who takes on a feisty young apprentice, for example, could be straight out of Leon. The fight scenes are well-crafted, slick and hard-hitting: I vaguely recall action director Jude Poyer as part of the Eastern Heroes crew in London, back in the nineties, so nice to see him kicking professional ass.

It does sometimes feel too over-stuffed, trying to juggle too many threads and characters. The script solution to any problem seems to be, throw in another subplot. The makers also deserve a demerit for ending on a horrendous cliffhanger. The streaming service have made no announcement regarding a second series: the show seems to have done reasonably well, but Netflix gonna Netflix. If that doesn’t happen, you should whack off a full star, since the way it ends is definitely not satisfying. But there does remain a good deal here to admire. I particularly liked the performance of Foïs, who brings a lot of nuance to a character that initially seems one-dimensional. The extended duration allows her to develop, though all told, it might have been better as a two-hour self-contained Besson flick.

Creators: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Jean-Yves Arnaud, Yoann Legave
Star: Lina El Arabi, Marina Foïs, Mathieu Kassovitz, Jeremy Nadeau

Blondie Maxwell Never Loses

  By

★★★
“Miss-nority report”

This French film takes place a little way into the future, though society has undergone radical changes. Law enforcement is now privatized, with investigations contracted out to private investigators, who have to balance their costs in order to turn a profit on the cases they accept. One such PI is Blondie Maxwell (Langlart) – and to get the obvious out of the way first, no, she is not blonde It’s mentioned once, but never explained. She is currently on the trail of the terrorist Boloch, who has been mounting a campaign against Chronos Industry, the all-encompassing tech company, which is invested in almost every area of everyday life. The reward would go a long way to solving her perilous financial situation.

She gets a case to investigate the murder of an escort. It seems an open-and-shut case with the evidence squarely pointing at a journalist. However, something doesn’t sit right with Blondie, and the more she picks at the crime, the more it seems a set-up job. Even her getting the case seems suspicious, since authorities know she doesn’t have the resources to investigate it properly. The journalist claims the victim was actually his source, who was going to blow the lid of Chronos, not least a “dark” area of their network where murder for hire is bought and sold. Is he telling the truth, and what does this have to do with Boloch and his campaign?

As the tag-line above implies, this bears a significant resemblance to Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report, with its tale of law and order run by technology. which someone on the inside gradually comes to realize isn’t as idyllic as it seems. This is rather less nuanced. At one point, a colleague of Blondie says, “Our job is to make the world safer. If that means sacrificing a little liberty, it works for me. It works for us all. It’s a choice we make as a society.” However, it’s clear Ivanowich’s sympathies are more aligned with Benjamin Franklin. This is very much a pre-liberty screed, though credit for being at least somewhat ahead of the curve with its concerns about artificial intelligence, an issue of increasing scrutiny in 2023.

Unlike Minority Report, it doesn’t have the budget to create a fully-fledged future society. This one looks like ours in almost every way, just with a few added bits of gadgetry, such as displays embedded into contact lenses. Maxwell’s main trait is her dogged determination to find out the truth, regardless of the personal cost, and she makes for an admirable heroine. As played by Langlart, she’s down to earth, though there were points where it seemed like the script had all but forgotten about Blondie. Either Ivanowich fell too much in love with the setting. or the story might have benefited from fewer characters and a sharper focus. Definitely not terrible though, and a good example of what can be done with imagination instead of budget.

Dir: Julien Ivanowich
Star: Léonie Langlart, Stéphane Dufourcq, Vincent Terrier, Boris de la Higuera