THE DEEP HOUSE

Stars: Camille Rowe, James Jagger, Eric Savin and Carolina Massey.
Writers: (French) Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury; (English) Julien David, Rachel Parker.
Directors: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 

What do you call two internet influencers at the bottom of a lake? If you answered, “A good start”, you’ll likely find some dark-hearted glee amongst the legit chills in The Deep House, the latest from horror cinema’s most promising new directors of the ‘00s, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury.

Brattish Urbex YouTuber Ben (James Jagger) has convinced his gf Tina (Camille Rowe) to travel the European countryside, exploring society’s forgotten relics, the kind that often hold supernatural potential. Ben is the sort of boyfriend who enjoys frightening Tina in abandoned mansions, because that’s what earns likes and shares on his travel site; on more than one occasion, Tina justifiably mutters, “You’re so annoying.” 

Their latest destination is a submerged home deep in a remote French lake. Led there by Pierre (Eric Savin), that most dangerous of horror tropes - the ‘mysterious local’ - Ben and Tina (with their underwater drone camera, ‘Tom’, as in ‘peeping’) are soon exploring the murky depths yet oddly pristine corridors of Montegnac House. The setting is pure ‘haunted estate’, but the claustrophobic intensity of scuba diving and the constant ticking-clock that is the oxygen reader exponentially increases the tension.

When their debut 2007 work À l'intérieur (Inside) was judged amongst the best of the new wave of French ‘hardcore horror’ films, the sheer brutality and filmmaking bravado of Bustillo and Maury earned them critical bouquets and cult status (both of which were less forthcoming with the arty hollowness of their 2011 follow-up, Livide). 

With The Deep House, they embrace a more barebones aesthetic; a first-person immediacy, the kind of filmmaking usually associated with the ‘found footage’ genre. Go-pros, drone lensing, body-cams, hi-tech mask-mics - the cutting edge tools of the video adventurer are used to record a fateful expedition, an undertaking filled with the kind of shocking revelations and otherworldly vistations that, ironically, would have ensured Ben the social media eyeballs he craved.

In the 14 years since they burst onto the scene, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have only improved as cinema craftspeople. With almost an hour of its 83 min story spent underwater, the directors and their DOP Jacques Ballard were submerged for 33 production days, capturing Hubert Pouille’s detailed production design and Ilse Willcox’s set decoration with consummate artistry. That The Deep House manages to be a white-knuckle ghost story as well seems like a value-added bonus.

LE CHOC DU FUTUR

English: THE SHOCK OF THE FUTURE

Stars: Alma Jodorowsky, Philippe Rebbot, Geoffrey Carey, Teddy Melis, Clara Luciani, Laurent Papot, Nicolas Ullmann, Xavier Berlioz and Elli Medeiros.
Writers: Marc Collin and Elina Gakou Gomba.
Director: Marc Collin.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

MARCHE DU FILM 2020: The international music scene was ripe for rebirth by the late 1970s. Disco was dead; punk had self-immolated; the decade’s rock mega-groups had peaked. As Marc Collin’s thrilling, giddy Le Choc du Futur paints history, the global musical new wave that emerged from that stagnant period, dominated the next ten years and influenced the next forty, was borne out of smoky Parisian apartments and the pulsating, youthful energy of young women musicians determined to forge their own paths.

A composer/music producer making his feature film directing debut, Collin is not telling one woman’s true story, instead utilising his narrative to filter the experience and legacy of pioneering synth-pop names like Clara Rockmore, Pauline Olivieros and Beatriz Ferreyra (and a dozen or so others, all listed at the end of the film). It proves rich source material; Collin and co-scripter Elina Gakou Gomba craft a lead character that honours extraordinary drive and creativity.

Twenty-something Ana (Alma Jodorowsky; pictured, top) is bedsitting a very small apartment (the setting for the bulk of Collin’s film). She wakes, lights a smoke, stretches, dances to Cerrone's Supernature; she is a young, free, contemporary, feminine spirit. She is also established as a modern electronic-music composer, booked to write ad music by her manager Jean Mi (Philippe Reboot, bringing ‘70s music biz sleaze in spades), but her talent is not developing, frustrating her output and stifling her motivation.

Three fateful moments alter the course of Ana’s life and the direction of modern music in the process. When her synthesizer breaks down, a technician visits her with a state-of-the-art Roland CR-78 beatbox; her music guru friend (Geoffrey Carey) avails her to the rich sounds of such artists as Throbbing Gristle, Aksak Maboub and Human League; and, a voice-over artist (Clara Luciani; pictured, above) turns out to be an equally talented lyricist, penning powerful words to Ana’s new sound.

There is not a great complexity to the plot, so nuance and shading falls to Collin’s leading lady. The granddaughter of legendary director Alejandro, Alma Jadorowsky is an electrifying central presence; everything about Ana’s creative process, determination and self-doubt stems from Jodorowsky’s natural screen presence and warmth. 

The story’s relevance comes in its depiction of music industry misogyny; alone in her apartment, Ana fends off three leery male visitors in the opening twenty minutes. Jodorowsky is bound by the 1979 setting in forming her reactions, but the strength she displays in overcoming finely-honed microaggressions (“You’re pretty, just be a singer”) provides a true modern heroine’s arc.

Le Choc du Futur is mostly about the music, of course, and Collin (whose multi-hyphenated approach to filmmaking sees him handle the synth score as well) fills extensive sequences with pulsating beats and fluid aural soundscapes, as envisioned by Ana. It is a rousing story, underplayed to near-perfection, made grand by the sense of artistic discovery it conveys.

ERRATUM 2037

Stars: Elie Benoît, Timothe Beugnet, Alex Lanz-Ketcham, Mariano Vicente and Emilien Benoît.
Writers/directors: Elie Benoît, Johann Benoît and Emilien Benoît.

Screening April 8 at L’Aquarium Cine-Cafe as part of the ‘SF Made in France’ strand of Les Intergalactiques Festival de Science-Fiction; Lyon, France.

Rating: 3.5/5

If ever doubt mounts as to how influential 1980s American cinema has been, one need only watch Erratum 2037, a wonderfully inventive French time-travel/conspiracy theory headscratcher utterly riddled with reverential film references. This staples-and-sticky-tape labour-of-love has been conjured by the Benoit brothers - Eli, Johann and Emilien – who were themselves only future concepts when their clear inspiration, Back to The Future established its own timelessness under Messrs Spielberg and Zemeckis.

The DNA of that classic comedy courses through every frame of Erratum 2037, but so too does that of Wargames, The X-Files, Looper, Sleeper and The Terminator. That the three frères français should craft such a consummate homage while also finding their own storytelling pulse suggests the trio may be destined for a broader canvas and bigger budgets.

A briskly unfolding prologue sets a dark tone, when a police operation to investigate lights in the night sky melds with a mother’s concern about her missing boy. Post-opening credits, we travel back in time, briefly, to meet our heroes Leo (Elie Benoit, the youngest of the co-directors) and Antoine (Timothe Beugnet) as they riff on the how cool the vehicular mayhem is in the latest Grand Theft Auto gameplay. The irony is lost on them when they are run off the road by a speeding van; the only upside of the near-miss a device, the BC-180, that falls from the truck.

The boys fire up the machine, to no immediate affect; Leo observes, “It’s a car stereo,” which it clearly is, but ‘in for a penny…’ at this point. Later that night, however, Leo’s room pulsates to a Spielberg-ian light show (recalling Gary Cuffey’s bedroom encounter in Close Encounters of The Third Kind). This opening sequence is so rich in Back to The Future references as to almost be distracting. Phil Garbutt’s original music echoes Alan Silvestri’s 1985 masterwork; Antoine notes the BC-180 needs ‘2.21 gigawatts’, an exact gigawatt more than that required by Doc Brown’s flux-capacitor.

Leo awakens in an alternate future-world, a hunted man for the role he unwittingly plays in the rebellion against enigmatic villain Emeric Boldenberg (Emilien Benoît). Our hero becomes a passive observer in the second act, unlike Michael J Fox, whose stardom was assured thanks to the charm he brought to the middle section of BTTF. Leo falls in with surviving agents of the resistance Pedro (Mariano Vicente) and Binglinger (Alex Lanz-Ketcham) when not in the clutches of Boldenberg’s buffoonish foot soldiers. The plot convolutes in that now typical ‘time-travel paradox’ manner that is too layered (and, occasionally, confusing) to detail here, suffice to say the filmmakers generally stay one step ahead of their own plotting, even when it threatens to careen out of control.

The Benoit brothers were teenagers when they filmed Erratum 2037, and it is sometimes distractingly obvious. Teenage boys don’t know how girls talk, so there are no woman characters of note (save for a last reel surprise); their otherwise innocuous adventure occasionally indulges in some icky violence, which must have been fun to stage but does not enhance the narrative.

Where their film soars is as a passionate fanboy’s nod to the influences of their formative years. A terrific floating-car sequence looks like a school project but is so skillfully assembled, plays like similar moments in The Fifth Element, Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of The Clones and, of course, Back to The Future II; Boldenberg’s headquarters clearly resembles Tyrell’s office tower in Blade Runner; there’s even a Star Wars ‘wipe cut’, for goodness sake!

On a backyard budget and with friends and family filling out the cast and crew, the brother’s intuitive skill marks them as natural born filmmakers. Perhaps more importantly, they embrace the historical context of the films that inspired them and enhance the genre with their own love of the artform.

RAW

Stars: Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Nait Oufella, Laurent Lucas, Marion Verneux, Jean-Louis Sbille and Joana Preis.
Writer/Director: Julia Ducournau

Screened in Semaine de la Critique selection at 69^th Festival de Cannes; reviewed at Olympia Cinemas 2, Cannes.

Rating: 4/5

While filmmakers and audiences tend to gag at the thought of ‘the other C-word’ onscreen, writer/director Julia Ducournau and her fearless leading lady Garance Marillier launch themselves teeth first into their bloody and occasionally brilliant cannibal horror pic, Raw (aka Grave, to its homeland Euro auds).

Blood ties and the inflamed passion of a woman’s blossoming are central to the French director’s strikingly accomplished first feature, one of the most invigorating debuts in recent memory. A coming-of-age tale conveyed with deftly handled emotional complexity and chilling thematic subtext, Raw is above all else a gut twisting work of classic body horror. On one occasion, your seasoned scribe averted his eyes in anticipation of what was about to unfold; there were a couple of other times when he wished he had.

In almost every frame is teen actress Garance Marillier as Justine, a committed vegetarian(!) who we meet as she is being delivered by her parents (Laurent Lucas, Joana Preis) to veterinary college. From the first night, senior students haze and harass the newbies; Justine is cut no slack by her big sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf), who so fervently adheres to university tradition she makes Justine eat raw rabbit kidney instead of being shamed before her peers.

Justine’s despair at eating flesh manifests in scaly, itchy skin; in one excrutiating but brilliantly sound-designed sequence, she works her nails deep into the red patches that have formed. Worse is yet to come, however, as the hunger for raw meat becomes an all-consuming need for Justine, her ravenous desires of every kind escalating to predatory proportions.

Such developments would be sufficient for many lesser works, but Ducornau taps a rich vein of sibling rivalry drama and familial intrigue that elevates the stakes and pits Marillier against the ferocity of Ella Rumpf’s Alexia. There are corpulent detours and the odd surreal touch along the way, but nothing derails the foreboding menace and driving dramatic pulse of the story; the denouement, a shocking sequence that plays like a real-world nightmare, and icky coda will induce a goosepimply bout of the cold sweats.

Raw is a film that both embraces and defies cinematic traditions. The sublime camerawork of DOP Ruben Impens (The Broken Circle Breakdown, 2013; The Sky Above Us, 2015) enhances the narrative while also subverting the genre; coming-of-age loveliness can turn to animalistic rage from one frame to the next. Other major assets include co-star Rabah Nait Oufella as coarse but caring gay roommate Adrien; the dizzying music score by Jim Williams (Sightseers, 2012; Kill List, 2011); and, of course, the precise and often sickening work done by the make-up effects units led by Olivier Alfonso and Laura Ozier. Julia Ducournau’s command of the production and assured guidance in the pursuit of her harrowing, unforgettable vision signifies the director as a new major talent. 

TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (Deux jours, une nuit)

Stars: Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione and Catherine Salee.
Writers/Directors: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne.

Rating: 4.5/5

Deceptively minimalist in its realism as only the cherished Dardennes Brothers can be, Two Days, One Night is, in fact, a soaring study in the fragility and fierceness of the human spirit.

As Sandra, the struggling young mum whose home and livelihood is threatened by heartless corporate cost cutting, Marion Cotillard further strengthens her status as arguably the finest actress working in film today; the Oscar and Cesar overseers agree, nominating her for Lead Actress at this year's ceremonies. Soliciting the pity of all her workmates, several of whom have already voted to have her sacked in favour of a Euro1000 bonus, Cotillard conveys a wave of desperate emotions that have her (and the audience) on the brink of tears from the first frame.

The Dardennes have always brought tremendous insight into the plight of their heroines. From their 1999 breakout hit, Rosetta, to 2011’s festival favourite, The Kid with a Bike, the Belgian brothers have constructed determined and damaged leading lady roles that (they produced Cotillard’s triumphant tearjerker, Rust and Bone, in 2012). They are also filmmakers who stridently refuse to indulge in sentimentality, a narrative avenue that presents itself as an option at several key moments in their latest work but which remains at a directorial arm’s length.

Capturing easily identifiable authenticity in its smallest moments (a shattering stillness at the family dinner table; Sandra’s nonchalant downing of anti-depressants), Two Days, One Night may be the film that most sublimely melds the barebones emotional reality in which their protagonists eek out survival with themes that are both deeply personal yet define our societal existence. It presents the consummate movie actress of her generation stripping bare the vanities of her profession to portray an everywoman hero, gently coaxed to life by filmmakers with a profound grasp of true emotion.

MINUSCULE: VALLEY OF THE ANTS

Writers/Directors: Helene Giraud and Thomas Szabo.

Rating: 3.5/5

The bigscreen adaptation of co-directors Helene Giraud and Thomas Szabo’s French TV hit is a charming adventure that only stumbles when it favours an increasingly expansive plot over its delightful six-legged stars. Which won’t matter one bit to the under 10s, for whom this unlikely, sweetly-told tale of friendship in the insect world will prove irresistible.

Giraud and Szabo stumbled upon a cottage industry when they launched the first series of six-minute shorts in 2006 chronicling anthropomorphised insect life in the French countryside (the film’s backdrop is the woods of Provence). To date, the pair has produced 78 mini-episodes; all are sans dialogue (as is the film version), ensuring easy transition into a global marketplace that now numbers over 70 territories. The step-up to cinema-sized coin was inevitable and has proven audience-friendly; Minuscule is already one of 2014’s top-earners, with Eu14million banked domestically.

The theme of family is established early, when a pregnant woman enjoying a picnic with her beau abandons her blanket of food to dash to the hospital. Jump cut to a birth, but not the one expected; instead, we are under a vast leafy frond and witnessing three ladybug eggs pop open. The new winged family set out on an exploratory adventure, only to have one little one become separated. All alone, his misadventures in survival lead him to the blanket, where he inadvertently befriends the leader of a black ant food-scouting regiment.

With the ants balancing a tin of sugar cubes and the wee ladybug along for the ride (a damaged wing renders the poor critter flightless), a cross-paddock odyssey is undertaken to return the bounty to the ant’s home. Dangers abound (including one very scary lizard, when viewed from the ant’s perspective), not least of which is a determinedly evil red ant platoon led by the film’s villain. The red ants are continuously denied some sugar (both good guys and bad almost falling victim to an ant life’s many dangers, including fish and motorcars) until they can take it no more; the reds launch an all out assault on the black ant hill.

It is this third-act/ninety-degree turn into a Lord of the Rings-style ‘castle siege’ that betrays the elegant, character-driven warmth of Minuscule; the wonderfully expressive eyes of the key protagonists and the major threats posed by minor obstacles are all the narrative needed. By the time the warring ant armies drag slingshots, fireworks and a bug-spray can into battle, audience empathy and interest has waned. One senses Giraud and Szabo were unsure of how to upscale the story as convincingly as the visuals; the narrative hiccups when our ladybug hero/heroine must travel back to the rug, becoming side-tracked into an unnecessary encounter with a spider and frog.

In every other respect, Minuscule is an enormously entertaining adventure. It effortlessly finds more engaging interplay and laughs amongst its handful of tiny, wordless characters than the entire cast of most recent smart-mouthed US animation efforts.