Quebec is not known for its horror films. More for its poignant family dramas, such as Les invasions barbares (2003) who clinched the Best Foreign Film Oscar a few years back or the classical Les bons débarras (1980), Jean-Claude Lauzon's films, etc... The present work is one that actually manages to walk the (very) fine line between tear-inducing family drama and hardcore torture porn without falling too much. If I had to pinpoint a specific sub-genre, I would tag it as "torture porn with a purpose". You see, child abduction/rape is a hot topic in québécois media, and it has been for quite some time now. First, there was a huge, province-wide campaign to find the late Cédrika Provencher. Instead of beer, the billboards now advertized the disappearance of the young girl, who was, sadly, never found. Then there was Julie Surprenant, whose parents followed in the footsteps of Cédrika's and amassed supporters by the tens of thousands but failed to find their daughter, who by all accounts, must be dead and left in a makeshift tomb. Now that Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, father of famous child victim Julie Boisvenu, has become a senator hellbent on protecting the conservative agenda, it was just a question of time before celebrated writer Patrick Sénécal wrote Les sept jours du talion. There was a deep hurt in the hearts of our people and the answer to that hurt may well be Sénécal's cathartic book. It offered what no parent of child victims could ever dream of: vengeance of the most brutal, yet orderly kind. It offered them a heroic avenger to appease their qualms and bloody his hands in their stead. But the novel also held its own, ethical ideas about biblical justice (read, an eye for an eye). The hero's inevitable downfall is proof that vengeance is always self-defeating (read not an eye for an eye will make the world blind, but rather the tamer expression: killing won't bring back the killed). In the end, you will have to figure out what to take out from such a dubious, overdetermined morale that's literally imposed on you by a very uneven distribution of dramatic highs and a mathematically-minded construction.
A cold, calculating avenger: Bruno Hamel.
The story revolves around Bruno Hamel, father of young Jasmine, a loveable ten-year old who is found raped and murdered in a field scant minutes after the opening scene. It focuses on his plan to capture and torture the perpetrator for seven days, that is until his daughter's birthday. Being a doctor (which is about all you get to learn about the protagonist), Bruno is a methodical and resourceful man, and he just won't quit. Although he doesn't quite enjoy the pain he inflicts, he feels that he somehow has to do it, for the sake of all the raped children of this world. This is quite symptomatic of the québécois mindset at this point in time. Killing, or tagging pedophiles is seen by many not as an act of revenge, but as civic duty. In effect, this overturns the avowed goal of our penal system, which is not punishment, but rehabilitation. And the entire philosophy behind Les sept jours du talion revolves around this contradiction. But the film also has a very precise agenda: to show that vengeance is never fulfilling. The rapid deterioration of Bruno, and the constant reminders of his dead daughter are obvious demonstrators of this "fact". Thus, we only see Bruno evolving a tiny bit all through the film, which is a necessary evil considering the nature of the point made, namely that vengeance makes you hollow.
Now, the film's extremely graphic nature is at once its greatest asset and greatest flaw. Sure, the repulsive acts onscreen are meant to challenge the audience's preconceived ideas about revenge, but the very people who hold these ideas dearest, namely the parents of young children, are not likely to even be in this audience. At once, the film tries to conquer the mainstream by using a hot media topic and high-strung drama, but also alienates this very audience with its graphic depiction of repulsive torture. Personally, I felt that the film falls squarely in the horror genre, if only for the opening shots focusing prominently on surgical tools that foreshadow vindictive violence and little else. As for the anemic, overdetermined plot, it yields too easily to the overwhelming depiction of torture. What we are left with is perhaps too dramatic for casual gorehounds, and not dramatic enough for casual moviegoers. In short, by focusing on the eponymous torture session, the film will always be hard-pressed to find a dedicated audience, not one drawn only by curiosity or blood thirst.
For one, I believe that Jasmine's lack of exposition greatly undermines the dramatic power of the film, nullifying almost any attempt at giving a strong justification for Bruno's actions. Sure, the little girl is cute. Sure, the sight of her corpse is horrific beyond words (her tiny, blood-streaked thighs and dead, gray eyes are truly a pain to watch). Sure, the killer's grin at the TV camera is infuriating. But the whole film is done so clinically, so mathematically, that it becomes little more than an exercise in button-pushing. Surprisingly, the camera shyly keeps its distance from the action and from the characters, avoiding close-ups, but not the carefully-planned, manipulative outbursts of extreme violence. As such, it reminded me of the abysmal, truly, wholly abysmal The Passion of the Christ (2004), a film that revels in a purely theatrical, never-gripping depictions of violence shamelessly constructed to manipulate people by stirring up their most deeply-held beliefs. One of the saddest examples of button-pushing in film history. While certainly not as bad as Passion, Les sept jours du talion is manipulative in a similar way: it shocks to shock, and to make you react, but without giving you much in the way of diegetic justification for this reaction. Not unlike his protagonist, director Daniel Grou (aka Podz) is a methodical man doing what he does out of duty, but lacking the emotional maturity to truly transcend his actions. He is a courageous man, who never shies away from showing us what he believes must be shown. But he is a man who only capture our guts, and never our hearts. Thus, Les sept jours du talion never achieves the dramatic stature it needed to become full, but nevertheless remains a ruthlessly smart, mathematical film. In short, it is smart, but not emotionally smart.
Les sept jours du talion: Well made, but cold.
Grou's first and foremost mistake lies squarely in his overconfidence in the abilities of unidimensional TV actor (and frequent collaborator) Claude Legault. The guy has such a limited range that it boggles the mind to think of someone casting him here. Bruno is a very complex and tragic, not to mention central character in the film. The lack of flair with which he is interpreted, and yes, directed (as Grou must accept a part of responsibility for his star's lackluster performance) is detrimental to the whole project. You see, Legault's specialty is screaming like a petulant kid and freaking out (which he does so well in Grou's Minuit le soir (TV)), which is fine in certain cases. Here, he can easily handle the great scene in which Bruno smashes up all the furniture in his torture chamber, but he lacks the subtlety necessary to embody the good doctor's more quiet, more controlled shades of anger. At any rate, he never comes across as a realistic surgeon. Personally, I would've have altered Bruno's character from the book to fit Legault's comfort zone, and not try to cram his already overwhelming TV persona in such a hard-to-play character. Make Bruno freak out all the time! He will come across as a character just as realistic (given the situation) and more fitting to Legault's own acting preferences. As things stand, no matter how hard the film tries to make Bruno come across as a dedicated, calculating avenger, we cannot help but feel that revenge of this kind necessarily entails a certain emotional weight that's mostly absent from the film but in the most crude ways.
And this is not all a question of acting, it's also a question of characterization within the screenplay. If Bruno had been more developed, and more exposed prior to the murder of his child, we might have understood what makes him tick. But as it is, he is merely a symbol of vengeful fatherhood. And again, this brings us back to the idea of a mathematical film. The multiplication of symbols, such as a buck's corpse that Bruno tries to bury to no avail, makes the film more of an intellectual experience than the visceral, self-revelatory one that it should have been. Truth is, all characters are mere symbols. First, there's the angry cop (played with a surprising lack of conviction by legendary Rémy Girard) who's wife has been murdered by a young thug who has eluded his clutches. The poor man watches the police tape of his better half's execution in loop every night (subtle like a 2x4 to the head...). Then, there are the three families of three other murdered girls, whom Bruno has contacted to let them know that he is holding the killer. Two of the families are begging for blood, while the last one wishes for peace. It all seems like a poll: "When asked if they would kidnap and torture their kids' murderers, 67% of Quebec families answered 'yes'"... Even the killer himself (Martin Dubreuil, who gives one of the most courageous performances I've ever seen, spending nearly the entire runtime naked and tortured) seems to evolve exactly out of a case-example: first denying his crime, then trying to win his captor over, then confessing, then begging, then confronting... All these characters represent social trends regarding the brutal execution of child molesters, but they have no emotional depth, no other dimension than the first. They remain abstract concepts. And although the will provoke topical reflexion, they will unlikely move you in any way.
The emotional crux of the film: Martin
Dubreuil's performance as the child killer.
Dubreuil's performance as the child killer.
All in all, the film is successful in what it is trying to achieve, namely to show the absurdity and uselessness of revenge, not only as an individual act, but also as a social one. Because although we never feel bad for the guy being tortured so extensively in front of us, we come to realize, thanks mostly to the use of symbolic and illusory corpses, that the mechanical slaughter of child killers will never fulfill the executioners, nor will it help them get over their grief and painful memories. The reason I've been so hard on the film in this review is not because I didn't like it. I actually did. A lot. It's just that it was so cold when it should have been so passionate. It's just that it seemed to want to excise all the human drama of the story, which is hard to translate onscreen, in order to keep only the most shocking, and easily provocative elements. It all seems too lazy. But despite it all, the film smartly makes many thoughtful, well crafted points for its central thesis. It's actually just like the work of a smart student knowing exactly what he was doing, while lacking conviction and self-confidence in his right answers. There's also the small trivial fact that Les sept jours du talion is a film aimed at a ghost audience of concerned parents and conservative types with itchy-trigger fingers who most likely loathe the torture porn sub-genre. In the end, it will be up to you, the viewer, to make up your own opinion, based on facts. And therein lies the film's paramount strength: its incidental ability to make everybody react in their own personal way and thus encourage dialogue between parties instead of pushing for one, common interpretation.
3/5 The film's main flaw is that it could've been so much better with a little conviction, passion and hard work.
