Art is a kind of umbrella that protects us from chaos. But we have to open cracks so that something of that rustle can reach us. And I think that cinema can be one of these cracks - all we need is for the blow to be struck.
The camera is out of focus, observing a quiet forest, a sunset, and a car on the highway
Jump scare to screaming children — “Thump him!” — “Look behind you!” — but we don’t see what they’re watching
A silent room of breath — a clothed man and a naked woman — “Spread your legs” — “Turn around” — “In the corner” — moans, struggle, silence
A kid walking blind-folded towards a barn — hands find a dead girl
Jean is a man driving along the Tour de France cycling route, finding and murdering prostitutes. In a rainstorm, he picks up Claire and takes her to her sister, Christine. Christine is into Jean, telling him that Claire is a virgin, but Jean’s violence erupts, and Claire offers herself instead
I read an interview with the filmmaker in which he talks about the violent stories in his films as fairy tales
Fairy tales [...] contain a great deal of violence and cruelty, like the desires that pass through us. They contain and reveal that founding, archaic, and animal part of us that is eventually tamed by society
The film steps into the extremes of eros and thanatos — the serial killer that chokes the life out of prostitutes during sex. It is the one who doesn’t fully know the pleasure of sex — whose first time and its pain are unknown experiences — that willfully goes into the hands of death to see what emerges. Part of the killer’s drive comes from the struggle for life — without it, his meaning evaporates
The film plays with the concept of the gaze by pulling you so intimately into the space of the characters that you have total distance from them — their world is overflowing with terrifying feelings and desires. But the way we look informs how we receive and respond to them. The sex people have — the noises and gestures they make — it becomes difficult to differentiate between those of pleasure and those of pain
Like the soundtrack by Suicide’s Alan Vega, we get long moments of atmosphere. It’s difficult to tell what, if anything, is happening. The camera cannot see in the darkest rooms — it won’t look up to the helicopters or the passing bikers, nor will it zoom out and focus on what it sees. Most moments are almost mundane in that the camera barely looks at what is happening
I don’t think the movie succeeds at its goals, but the filmmaking itself is compelling. Coming from the art world, Grandrieux has an unusual eye, and it’s the boundaries he pushes there that I find more valuable than the moral transgressions he explores