Was expectant about this film considering I’ve recently watched – and been captivated by – the directors earlier film L’Ennui.
And it started off promisingly enough. You’ve got Jean-Pierre Darrousin (in pic above) off with wife in the car to pick up the kids from summer school; he’s drinking and driving, getting more pissed and more pissed off – and she’s getting pissed off (with him) – and it seems to be boiling over nicely with nasty marital discord and distemper.
Then she buggers off; it’s the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, somewhere on a road heading towards Bordeaux. And he goes into a contrite panic, desperately driving around trying to find her.
There’s parallels to be drawn with L’Ennui: mid-life crisis hurtling neurotically into angst-driven melt-down; disappointment septically seeping out of disappointing life’s; angry wounds of jealous impotence being touched painfully on and hurt.
Darrousin picks up a hitcher – an almost parodically “silent” dark and moody stranger. Who of course happens to be a brutal murderer on the run. And the film soon is sliding and declining down the phony contrived chute of the “Thriller” genre – pushing at you the narrative “tricks” of tension you’re supposed to be feeling anxious about.
At which point i started losing interest.
I don’t like being manipulated. Especially when i can see how the manipulation is being formulated and formatted. All too predictable. Even when it seems to be – unpredictably – springing suprising “twists”.
The film (this film) just becomes a film then. Merely a film – of type; reductive, generic.
Dir: Cedric Kahn, France
6/10
