Absentia (2011)

I wrote a capsule review for this film during the 2011 edition of Fantasia, but after picking up a DVD copy in a bargain bin, I decided to write something more substantial on the topic. The film was given such an enthusiastic review by the programmers at the festival that I felt the need to revisit its darkly mundane universe in order to find the elusive brilliance I had missed the first time around. Same as before, I found that Absentia was a clever film with great ambitions, but a lack of means to achieve those ambitions. Its reliance on mundane events to generate affect amongst spectators actually impairs its departure into the realm of fantasy, especially near the end, when the screenplay overreaches itself by trying to explain every single disappearance since the beginning of time.

Absentia is an ambitious film, but it fails to

really deliver on its intriguing premise.

The narrative of the film focuses on a pair of sisters, pregnant Tricia, whose husband Daniel has now been missing for seven years, and Callie, a recovering drug addict who is just reuniting with her estranged sister in L.A., near the mysterious tunnel where Daniel vanished all those years ago. While in the process of declaring her husband “dead in absentia”, Tricia starts being plagued by the usual apparitions of black-eyed ghosts shrieking at the screen. She feels guilty, you see, for having gotten knocked up by the police detective assigned to Daniel’s case.  After much trial and tribulation, during which the visions become increasingly frequent and Callie starts witnessing weird goings-on in the tunnel, Daniel suddenly returns. But he is in bad shape, exhibiting marks of violence all over his body and suffering from a serious case of sun depravation. Seemingly unwilling to reveal the exact conditions in which he has lived for the past seven years, Daniel is pushed to confess, just before disappearing once more for good. And as Callie starts investigating, we find that his disappearance was one of many, and that they all pertain to mythical insect creatures living just beyond the veil of our dimension. So, be ready to suspend your disbelief.

Everything in the film, from the nearly TV-level aesthetics to the lowbrow script, even the cyclical nature of the narrative and the sheer ugliness of the locales are meant to create a certain sense of familiarity, one could say “proximity” to the material onscreen. The focus put on the paperwork necessary to obtain the death certificate is another means to achieve this goal, and so are the incredibly mundane dialogues, delivered sometimes awkwardly, by a willing cast of no-namers. All of this contributes to create a really earnest drama that involves the spectator right away. The opening sequence is quite powerful in that regard. It shows protagonist Tricia walking through her neighborhood, removing withered missing person posters and stapling new ones on various telephone posts. She does so in a mechanical, resigned way that nicely sums up her current situation and the angst building up inside her. Time has obviously taken a toll on her, same as on the posters, who have long braved the elements, but to no avail. The whole ordeal of having a death certificate issued for a person in absentia also helps make her ordeal appear intelligible to us, who have all had to deal with paperwork in one way or another. That said, the legally-determined time lapse of seven years necessary to declare a person “dead in absentia”, hence allowing relatives to sever painful ties with the deceased, might appear perfectly sound from a bureaucratic standpoint , but they must be excruciating for anybody living in doubt as to their relative’s whereabouts. Thus, horror remains in the mundane reality of bureaucracy, as it is in the guilt of “betraying” a lost husband with another man. But horror also comes from without, and that is perhaps where the film starts to falter.

Mundane imagery is a perfect gateway

into the world of the film.

You see, when Daniel reappears, looking pale as a ghost, malnourished and wearing the very same clothes he wore the day of his disappearance, we obviously suspect supernatural intervention. And at this point, the mystery remains tantalizing. Who, or what could’ve bruised the man to such an extent? Who, or what would’ve wanted to keep him alive for nearly a decade without stealing any of his money? Maybe we could’ve shared some of Daniel’s memories at this point, but the film prefers engaging in iffy, mythological speculation. Despite an embryonic explanation provided by Daniel as to the shape of his tormentors, we are soon deprived of his hands-on memories when he is kidnapped once more under Callie’s glassy eyes. Wrought with guilt for having lost Tricia’s husband to an ill-defined insect beast, she conducts a hardy Google investigation*, and comes up with some certitudes that immediately deflate any attempt at closing the film with an open ending. In a particularly half-assed segway into the mythological aspects of the film, the young woman uses high school science and the momentary gullibility of the curious spectator to tell us how nothing on the planet can be totally solid, hence impregnable. This opens up the ill-defined idea of a contiguous dimension existing at the threshold of our own, a hidden dimension home to mythological snatchers of people. The idea is quite horrific in itself, but it is less so than the mystery that preceded. And so, the politic of intelligibility for all turns out to be a trump card for we are soon asked to suspend our disbelief in a big way.

All through the film, mystery is the name of the game, with Tricia’s angst stemming directly from her lack of information regarding the disappearance of her husband. One of the most intriguing plot devices in the film actually concerns that very lack of information and the stretch of imagination necessary to fill in the gaps. When asked for a tentative explanation as to her husband’s disappearance, Tricia suggests a number of scenarios, each one complemented by a short series of images. Hence, we get to see Daniel as a government operative keeping a watchful eye on his former home, or an amnesic with a new family and a new life. These images are pure forgery, of course, but they perfectly delineate the reality of “loss” victims, forced to make sense of their loved one’s disappearance with any sort of fantastic story. When Daniel finally comes back to our side of reality, popping up on the front lawn as Tricia and her new boyfriend are going out to celebrate their newly recognized union, we are dumbstruck. The poor man is pale and weak, crumbling down on the pavement even before he could reach the adulterous couple. When we later discover bruises all over his body and chicken bones inside his stomach, we can only struggle to explain them, unsure as to our actual desire to learn the truth. At this point, the multi-scenario device would’ve worked better to procure a tentative explanation rather than an all-encompassing one, thus allowing our imagination to fill in the gaps left by Daniel’s own partial understanding of his ordeal.

Psychological angst is more interesting 

than supernatural events

In the end, Absentia works better as an earnest character study than as a true horror film. The supernatural elements contained within are neither embodied enough to create any sort of spectacle, nor mysterious enough to cultivate ambiguity. They are left in a sort of expressive limbo that impairs the whole efficiency of the narrative, the most interesting aspect thereof being the human factor and its relationship to loss. With the crux of dramatic power lying in Tricia’s guilt and the ability to cope with loss, the “monstrous” aspects of the screenplay seem to have been merely an afterthought. And while they provides a powerful ending, they also completely mar our sense of wonder and excitement as to the aura of mystery permeating the film.

2,5/5   A very intriguing, but poorly produced film that turns out to be more interesting in its depiction of mundane angst, than as a true monster film.

* Remember the days where characters would learn stuff by visiting their local library and getting involved in upbeat montages? Some films still privilege that olden approach, such as that wonderful British offering The Pact, but most films today take the “Wikipedia” approach to knowledge, that is the fastest way around the block, and not the scenic route…Here, Callie builds an entire dossier, including newspaper clippings, from random web resources. 

Callie looks great, but she hardly makes a convincing 

argument for the existence of insectoid kidnappers.

Candyman (1992)

Despite a certain critical consensus, Candyman’s lack of genuine recognition amongst the general public has deprived it of any true cult status. Still, it remains one of the key films in postmodern horror and a major contributor in the ongoing (and rather arduous) process of intellectualizing horror cinema. As such, it possesses two major assets: a surprisingly relevant discourse on the dissemination of urban mythologies and a unique social conscience, which manifests in a candid celebration of both the ongoing struggle for race/gender equality, and more specifically, the necessary contribution of women in the realm of cultural studies. Above all, Candyman is a truly collective effort, with everyone in the project carrying out his/her job with the most stellar of professionalism and the most passionate of creative input. The result is a film that should imperatively leave the confines of the slasher sub-genre and enter the respectable arena of upscale, thinking women’s horror cinema.

According to legend(s), Candyman was originally a child born to a rich black industrialist at the turn of the 19^th century. After receiving an education fit for a wealthy white youth, he showed promise in the art of painting portraits depicting the decadent aristocracy and their numerous earthly possessions. Notwithstanding the obvious reference to still life painting contained in this description, Candyman would soon prove to be a true prophet of erosion for the people around him. There would be need for a traumatic event to unearth that potential however, and that traumatic event came from a romantic tragedy that occurred soon after the young man was commissioned to capture the virginal beauty of a rich man’s daughter.

Monster or victim? Tony Todd's soft features

make for a sympathetic boogeyman.

As every such story would have it, the painter was so smitten by his subject, that he fell madly in love with her, hence drawing the father’s murderous anger, which would take the shape of a nasty assassination plot. Hired by the old man, a group of thugs then proceeded to corner the young painter and saw off his hand with a rusty blade, much to the indifference of the locals. After depriving him of the initial source of his transgression, his painterly hand, the thugs then stripped Candyman and attacked the second source of his transgression, his youthful body, on which they smeared honey combs stolen from nearby hives. After being consumed by myriads of bee stings, the young man became a local boogeyman, whose legacy is comprised of an untold number of corpses popping up in the projects near the execution site. To this day, his legend has persisted and has struck fear into the hearts of the locals, with little interest invested in his lover, who is about to emerge and claim her due through the body of a gorgeous young scholar, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen). And so the battle for gender representation rages on…

As with any film with such intellectual breadth, the opening sequence is key to understanding the narrative. Being a series of overhead shots featuring the busy highways surrounding Chicago accompanied by the monumental music of neo-classic composer Philip Glass, this sequence immediately compels us to think about the nature of urban mythologies. The interlocking roads taken by the vehicles and their drivers, the constant intersection of thoughts that they suggest, this amounts to a blueprint of urban existence. Life in the city is thus shown as a series of close encounters giving us a desperately partial understanding of all others, living their lives only through stories and hear-say, but sharing the same reality nonetheless.

A simple and effective opening scene is key to

unleashing the symbolic power of the film.

This idea of hear-say and the broken chain of knowledge becomes even more obvious as the following sequence opens, and we hear Tony Todd’s mesmerizing voice suggesting an apocalyptical truth to a very receptive Virginia Madsen (thus foreshadowing the second half of the film). The young woman herself, despite being cut off from Candyman’s actual voice is totally engulfed in his legend, which comes to her through layers and layers of half-truths, which intersects like the cars on the highway. “Everybody knows the story”, a young woman says to Madsen’s tape recorder before she proceeds to deliver a tale originating from her “roommate’s boyfriend”. Apparently, there was a girl and a baby that were killed by Candyman, who was drawn to the scene when the girl uttered his name five times in front of the bathroom mirror. Now, this story belongs solely to the realm of urban legends, but its relevance lies elsewhere than in its potential veracity, namely in the many layers surrounding the legend: the four degrees of separation between victim and storyteller, the tape recorder that crystallizes the story, and most importantly, Madsen’s character itself, which will later become a physical vessel for the story. All these layers are important because they contribute to keep the myth alive, to enlarge and disseminate it, and allow it to be kept alive at the intersection of several minds (the very same minds that kept brushing each other during the opening sequence).

Interestingly enough, these layers soon start to dispel once Helen starts delving lower and lower in the social strata, and closer to the source of the legend, that is the crass poor neighborhood of Cabrini Green, where the execution site is located, and where the story of the mirror originated from the real-life murder of one Ruthie Jean. The fear-gripped poor are apparently more sensible to the idea of a boogeyman than the well-thinking rich. But this proves to be another false lead in the pursuit of Candyman, as we begin to understand that the poor and the rich share more than what first appeared. Rich and poor, despite their contrasting lifestyles, which are amply polarized within the narrative, all share a common humanity and with it two major tenets that allow the stories surrounding boogeymen to take roots: fear and spirituality.

It is no coincidence that the film is set in Chicago, the birthplace of American sociology, and the stomping ground of the US’ only black president. After all, it is primordially interested in the effects of segregation between the black poor and the rich white. By reuniting them in fear, director/writer Rose manages to break boundaries and enlighten the narrow mindset of the common horror film spectator. By using the depth of field to highlight the social cleavage between the people living in the projects (shown in the foreground) and the people living in the downtown skyscrapers (shown in the far background), he greatly emphasizes the distance between people of different economical backgrounds, the poorer of which are all black and the richer of which are almost all white. By further framing the squalid interiors of the projects to a large extent, almost all of which are textbook examples of urban deliquescence, director Rose creates a very grim portrait of life in the slums, especially when compared with life downtown. On the other hand, by likening the architecture of the protagonists’ apartment complex and the Cabrini Green projects, it becomes clear that the cleavage between the rich and poor is merely plaster-thin (or skin-deep) in some regards. This fact is reiterated by Helen’s visit into the cute, middle-class apartment of Anne-Marie McCoy, protruding from the dirty projects like a healthy thumb amidst a series of sore fingers.

Only through the world of myths are

the rich and poor united.

And while the question of class cleavage is eventually resolved through the universality of fear and the human condition, Helen’s initial contention to the effect that the Candyman legend is a way for the disenfranchised poor to cope with the horror permeating their daily lives (while it is simultaneously dismissed by well-thinking white scholars) is even more interesting. Obviously, myths are universal and quite deeply ingrained in the human psyche, but historically, they’ve been more closely associated with the ignorant poor, who struggle to find a reason for their situation while the knowledgeable rich manufacture those myths so as to keep the poor at their mercy. I don’t mean to sound like a bigot, but I’m certain that if one were to make a survey, they would surely realize that faith is greater amongst the disenfranchised, uneducated poor than in the rich, educated communities. Obviously, this would seem to provide a fertile soil from which myths could sprout. But the truth of the matter is, as we are led to understand, that no matter what attitude one might entertain toward any myth, both rich and poor are equally determined in the dissemination thereof. If the rich man (or woman) would rather learn of myths through essays and lectures, then the poor could still liven them orally, through street art, etc. In that sense, we realize that the lecture given by an eminent professor during a dinner party at an upscale restaurant is of equal relevance than the many graffiti featuring the foreboding warning “Sweets for the sweet” or the shit-covered arrow that points to a toilet bowl for of buzzing bees. They all contribute in their own way to the livelihood of the Candyman legend. They all express a common reality that we come to share through the simple, and universally human act of believing.

More important than the racial/social question here is the question of gender, its reality within academia and its importance within the world of myths. In our discussion thereof, we shan’t overlook the importance of Virgina Madsen’s body and classical beauty within the narrative, as opposed to the plain, ethereal look of her professor hubby and the hulking, yet disembodied presence of the specter himself (Tony Todd in a star-making performance that focuses on his soft, mesmerizing voice and imposing stature rather than any real acting chops). From the very beginning of the film, it is obvious that protagonist Helen and co-worker Bernadette Walsh (Kasi Lemmons) are stuck in academic limbo, struggling to remove scraps of information from horny undergrads in deserted classrooms, while constantly remaining in the shadow of influential male professors, such as Helen’s husband Trevor (Xander Berkeley, Todd Voight from Terminator 2). It makes for a shocking contrast to see Helen exit a quiet pint-sized classroom to enter a large auditorium full of avid students laughing at the witty remarks made by her husband. It is especially shocking to see that both husband and wife share the same field of interest, namely the study of urban myths. But it is even more shocking to realize that Trevor is actually feeding off Helen’s research, proving once more that behind every great man is a great woman. But that woman will eventually take to the foreground by achieving some truly hands-on research and engaging the myth in a truly self-sacrificing way. The result is a true rise to grace, a revolutionary liberation from the shackles of flesh and the ultimate induction of the protagonist in the disembodied world of ideas.

Helen stuck in "academic limbo".

As embodied by the gorgeous Virginia Madsen, Helen proves to be quite a woman, both in her fearlessly inquisitive mind and her voluptuous body. Because while the male scholars in her immediate surroundings have all managed to trade their ingrate corporeal selves for purely intellectual selves, Helen is very much the prisoner of her own flesh as both the object of the male gaze and of male violence. Her nude or bloodied body is constant proof of her finite existence, especially when confronted with the dire perspective of falling into “academic limbo” (hence having her intellectual self truly vanish along with her physical self). By toiling to achieve some legitimate hands-on research in the slums, she eventually puts her physical self at risk, trading the reality of her corporeal existence for a lasting place in academia. Unfortunately, her bruised sculptural body trumps her intellectual worth in many regards, making her an object of desire for Candyman, and an object of curiosity for the press (with her essay gaining popularity right after she is attacked by Cabrini Green thugs). In the end, Helen literally sacrifices her physical shell for a place in urban mythology, reaching the world of ideas through a necessary roundabout. Such a conclusion necessarily prompts many questions as to the actual sexual politics of the film, but these are all necessary questions, engaged in creating a truly open ending that will luckily refresh the crucial debate concerning gender representation in horror cinema.

It would be hard to review the film without mentioning some technical points, starting with the nearly necessary contribution of Philip Glass’ memorable score to the haunting atmosphere cultivated by director Rose. By drawing from liturgical litanies, it gives the film a truly epic quality, allowing our contemporary myths to gain an everlasting quality while simultaneously highlighting the tragedy inherent to life in the slums. It’s also rare to see a “vulgar” horror film befitted with the work of such a renowned composer as Glass. As I mentioned in my opening statement, it’s rare for a film of this ilk to include such a high amount of stellar craftsmanship. Aside from the sheer depth of the screenplay and its earnest concern for social symbolism, Candyman also benefits from the inspired work of its many different artisans, starting with the actors, who all contribute their fair share to the creation of complex, true-to-life characters. With wondrous locales, which perfectly capture the decay inherent to the slums, the film is also a marvel to look at, and a testament to both efficient photography and art direction. The creation of an impressionistic mindscape for Helen, achieved through symbolic editing, further transforms the film into a reflection of her own interiority, thus highlighting her crucial presence as both a vessel and disseminator of ideas. All of these elements vie to create a rich landscape on which to inscribe the rich symbolism inherent to the screenplay.

 Helen eventually escapes the shackles of corporeality,

but what does that say about the film's gender politics?

All in all, Candyman is a truly superior entry in the canon of postmodern horror and one of the key films of the 1990s. Its refreshingly complex and socially conscious screenplay adapted from Clive Barker’s The Forbidden gives unforeseen depth to the narrative and the obvious dedication of the crew gives it the appropriate framework in which to expand. With both Virginia Madsen and Tony Todd contributing memorable figures to the ever-growing roster of film specters, Candyman will forever hold some staying power. Its further contribution to the academic discourse surrounding gender representation is also highly commendable, and far removed from the normal concerns of slasher films. A great success by any stretch of the imagination.

4/5   A haunting film with a real social conscience that encompasses both race and gender issues, Candyman proves to be a major entry in the canon of postmodern horror.  

In My Skin (2002)

Original title: Dans ma peau (literal translation)

Dans ma peau is a rare treat: a debut feature that could very well leave an indelible trace in the annals of genre cinema, at once an earnest portrait of psychological decay and a cringe-inducing thrill ride with the potential to destabilize even the most hardened of spectators. The film is authored by a doubtlessly talented young woman by the name of Marina De Van (previously co-screenwriter for François Ozon’s 8 femmes and Sous le sable) who courageously frames herself, and her body, in a bid to widen the cannon of body horror by adding a very personal dimension to it. The result is absolutely mesmerizing, if not for some self-mutilation sequences that border on the unbearable, then for the newcomer’s surprising mastery of tension-building and uncanny ability to exteriorize hidden passions in a meaningful and honest way. There is a new dissident voice in genre cinema, my friends, and it will lure you right into its fucked-up world.

Be ready to enter a very dark world lying

just beyond the veil of yours...

The story here is centered on Esther (Marina De Van), an obnoxious Parisian yuppie working for some trendy marketing outfit with windows for walls. Following a quick set-up in which we are introduced to her boyfriend Vincent and school chum Sandrine, the protagonist is shown attending a crowded party during which she is severely wounded. The resulting gashes on her right leg are quite nasty, and they seem to seriously throw her off kilter. As the plot unfolds, she starts sublimating the stress inherent to her high-profile job (and her crumbling personal life) by way of incessant self-mutilation, the incitation towards which is provided by the very availability of her wounds. These wounds are probed with the fingers, not unlike the flaccid flesh around her belly and breasts, then with various objects, metal rulers, knives and scissors until more and more scars cover her… that is until her physical state starts matching her mental state. In the process, Esther gradually alienates her boyfriend and colleagues, choosing instead a lonely spiral of morbid self-discovery. The final shot of the film is equally challenging as anything else in there, so you will want to stick around for it. Or for any prior depiction of psychosis-induced butchery, sensuous self-cannibalism or other such eccentricities for which genre fans are willing to crowd theaters. 

What stands out most prominently over the course of the film is the director’s sheer courage in baring both her body and her mind for art, often in desperately self-damaging situations that could’ve buried lesser authors. By focusing almost solely on her own physical self as object of constant fascination and violence, De Van even out-muscles Shinya Tsukamoto, her Japanese equivalent and predecessor (whom we will discuss later). But the centrality of Esther’s body, however crucial it is to narrative construction, is not necessarily easy to achieve, and that is where the director really earns her stars. The various degrees of nudity that De Van brazenly exhibits throughout the film obviously help contextualize her body within the cruel realm of self-consciousness, and should be commended as such. But it’s ultimately in the location of that body within the diegesis that she manages to create a truly sensuous, self-centered landscape full of meaning.

Director Marina De Van delivers an incredibly

powerful performance as neurotic yuppie Esther.

Here, the body is often exposed and scrutinized before the surrounding space in a bid to establish it (and not the exasperated boyfriend) as the primary object of Esther’s passion.  This is quite eloquently exemplified by the hotel scene, which I would be tempted to qualify as one of the quintessential sequences of self-gratification in cinematic history. Following a stressful business dinner during which Esther has sliced her arm extensively, the young woman suddenly spots a neon sign buzzing on the side of a nearby hotel. The film then quickly cuts to a series of close shots wherein the protagonist is cutting pieces out of her, eating them and licking the resulting wound in a singular display of self-eroticism that will have you mesmerized for the better part of two minutes. It is only after the deed is done, and Esther’s spell has started waning, that the location of her body within the room is confirmed and the surrounding décor is revealed. The immediate and mechanical focus put on the body, and its later subservience to the space where it has “awakened” will undoubtedly remind one of a passionate love affair, especially where the locale (a hotel room) is concerned. Like with any love affair, the immediate focus is put on carnality, with little importance awarded to what surrounds it. It is only after climax that one becomes aware of what his/her animal self has achieved in a thrust of passion. It is only then that one’s surroundings become apparent, and surprising in their banality. By thus likening self-mutilation, and self-cannibalism to a love affair, De Van not only implies a direct correlation between passion and self-mutilation, but she does so by using universally intelligible signs. And that is the first step in attempting to create an understanding, and not just a show out of such marginalized, yet brutally human temptations.

This brings us to another crucial feature of De Van’s film: it’s ability to draw on personal drama to better tell a universally intelligible tale. The honesty and candor inherent to the whole story, and its location within the real world of a real person is indeed a welcome departure from the politics of distanciation usually reserved for characters with such inclinations. More specifically, the depiction of self-mutilation as something primordially passionate, not necessarily sexual in nature and befitting even upper class professionals is key to shifting the representation thereof away from the grim sensationalism of exploitation cinema toward the engrossing realism of arthouse cinema. This is essential in begging our understanding of the protagonist’s state of mind and not our simple condemnation of her actions, such as that advocated by all the peripheral characters onscreen. As such, the film is a heartfelt testimony to the power of addiction, and its roots in the most mundane of emotional unbalance. Whether you decide to take it for what it is, or to see it as a simple effort meant to shock will in turn determine your place within, or outside the dialogue concerning the emotional strain endured by truly passionate people.

Esther's love affair with herself constitutes one of

the most unsettling moments of self-eroticism in cinema.

Being a former adept of self-mutilation myself, I felt compelled by De Van’s character, even though we share almost nothing in common, neither gender, nor class or home country. It is in the sheer passion on display that I found my reflection, and in the process of inscribing one’s psychological angst directly on the flesh in a bid to exteriorize it, and secretly beg others to notice. Personally, I used to cut myself in order to externalize my despair. Not necessarily in a destructive way, but in an artistic one, by using the body as canvas (not unlike Esther, who eventually starts photographing her wounds). Here, self-mutilation is equally therapeutic, a way to ward off stress and feelings of inadequacy by inscribing, and leaving them on the flesh.

The one thing I first had trouble to fathom within the narrative is just how readily Esther confessed her passion to Sandrine, who in turn rushed to remove scissors and other metal devices form her reach. But then I understood that the desire to share one’s despair is equally human as the harboring of that despair. What isn’t human is in other people’s reactions, in their fear, anger, immediate disapprobation, and most importantly, their lack of willingness to understand self-mutilation, an activity in which we all indulge, but with various degrees of passion (some eat hamburgers and bite their nails, while others harbor scars). Pure passion is fearsome apparently, and that is also what the film vies to depict in the acrid reactions of Esther’s friends and relatives. Passion is self-destructing, but it is also liberating as we can see in Esther’s transformation from docile bourgeois to beastly artist. And it is in that dialectic of passion within bourgeois society that we understand humanity, through everyday observations by one of its victims and adepts.

Like Andrei Tarkovsky, who constantly discussed the importance of time in order to extend his own life into others’, so too does De Van allow her own story to reach out into the world. Same as Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, a very personal film about the director’s own life, Dans ma peau will likely find more resonance amongst the director’s peers than any commercial attempt at depicting the same reality. In turn, maybe too will De Van’s courage inspire some courage in others, forcing dialogue about the reasons and motivations behind self-mutilation and not its simple medicalization as a pathological practice.

The willingness to understand is the first step in

aiding those with mental problems.

The opposition between the personal and commercial depictions of self-mutilation can best be assessed by comparing the Japanese iconography with the iconography contained in De Van’s film. Being a staple of Japanese society, suicide and its lesser forms enjoy a certain visibility within popular culture, often being depicted as nearly mundane events. Furthermore, they are hardly ever shown in a realistic fashion, often being accompanied by highly exaggerated sound effects, such as splashing or squishing. This adds a comical, rather than grave dimension to these events, making them as equally commonplace as the murders in gore films. The serious appraisal of such issues as self-mutilation is thus carefully avoided through exaggeration, often making them out to be merely superficial character points (see Tokyo Gore Police, Ichi the Killer, Suicide Club…). In Dans ma peau however, the skin bears real marks and De Van’s interpretation remains low-key. With subtle and effective characterization to boot, her protagonist is all but the extravagant eccentric from Japanese genre cinema, tenderly peeling off the skin from her arm instead of having it spurt all over the walls. This iconographic discrepancy is explicitly addressed during the film, as Esther is discussing culture-specific advertising with a couple of marketing honchos. Theirs is a conversation about a symbolic gesture that got lost in translation during a marketing campaign. In effect, they might as well be talking about self-mutilation as another symbolic gesture with diverging cultural implications. Such a mise-en-abîme is incredibly clever and effective, and it further reminds us of the present film’s enormous debt to the personal cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto.

I if were to describe Dans ma peau to someone with absolutely no knowledge thereof, I would say that it is a Parisian female version of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man as both films similarly vie to depict the physical imprint left on us by urban angst and the hopeless rat race in which we participate so eagerly and invest so much of our souls. But where Tsukamoto’s hyperkinetic mise-en-scène focuses on otherworldly monster suits and the explosive power of repressed emotions, De Van does a subtler, and eventually more effective job of creating a sensuous landscape in which the spectator is helplessly drawn. Obviously, the naturalistic nature of Esther’s affliction helps ease us into the narrative, much more so than Tsukamoto’s extravagant cyborgs, but it is eventually in the overbid of common grounds that the film really strikes home. It is in the impassibility of friends, the anger of lovers and the coldness of bosses that we can really reflect on our own lives and the floodgates we have erected to keep our emotions in check. After all, we’ve all experienced petty rivalries with school chums, we’ve all experienced mundane disputes with significant others and we’ve all felt unsure about our professional proficiency. Hence, we can truly relate to Esther in her ordeal, especially where the painfully mundane nature of the dialogues is concerned, as well as the likening of her self-consuming passion to a simple extra-conjugal affair. All of these realistic elements vie to create a powerfully relevant film about Parisian angst in the midst of the city’s rejuvenation with the fresh blood of ruthless young capitalists.

Shades of Tetsuo are omnipresent in Dans ma peau.

Obviously, Dans ma peau is interesting in its subject matter alone, but it wouldn’t have soared to such heights, were it not for De Van’s surprisingly strong hand at the helm, and her ability to masterfully sustain tension throughout. In the process, she often relies on her own earnest physical performance to create affect and that goes entirely to her credit. That said, some of the most shocking sequences in the film are 100% performance-based, such as the many lengthy shots in which Esther sensually scrapes her skin with blades while uncomfortably contorted, or that awkward pre-sex scene with her suspicious boyfriend. But then, De Van also makes great use of the offscreen space, framing either her face while in the process of reacting to pain, or alternating shots of ongoing butchery with shots of the surrounding space (as exemplified in the dinner scene), hence maximizing our anticipation as to the intensity of what we don’t see. This leaves us in a perpetual sense of eagerness and unease, especially in the split-screen sequence near the end, where we can only infer from the blood onscreen the atrocious actions taking place offscreen.

The concept of the split-screen is quite straightforward, especially in its original iteration during the opening credits. It prefigures both the schizoid nature of Esther’s personality, but also the idea of a personal reality slightly out of synch with the reality of the masses (as exemplified by the grayish right frame). The later iteration of the concept, once Esther has gone for good past the threshold of “normalcy” belongs to another level of filmmaking altogether. This late sequence is actually quite masterful in its probing of the very personal, very chaotic space of an increasingly damaged Esther, and it does so with visceral bravado and a surprising knack for composition. The pattern of spattered blood across the room is not only perfect, but the complementary of both the images contained in the two frames adds another dimension to the complexity of the psychological landscape being shot. As for the near total absence of active humanity within the frame, it makes the scene that much unnerving as a challenge to our morbid expectations. But all in all, this sequence is the trademark of a great filmmaker, fully in control of her craft and able to use experimental techniques in a novel and meaningful way.

Offscreen space plays a huge part in

shaping our most dire expectations.

The story structure might be quite simple here, with the crux of the narrative abiding by a strict action/reaction logic, but the inclusion of several key symbolic scenes filmed with an incredible knack for tension-building greatly help dynamize the ensemble. Deriving from an acute sense of sensual confusion (due mostly to the loud music playing in the background), the opening party scene quickly establishes Esther as a person prone to emotional wanderings, as exemplified by the tight tracking shots through the weirdly oppressive interiors of her host’s house, and the near pitch black construction site where she is first hurt. By cultivating a strong sense of disorientation (through the protagonist’s wanderings) and showcasing the initial soiling of the quiet bourgeois façade (through the apparition of blood on the white carpet), this scene is a great introduction to the following events.

But then, there are several other scenes showcasing the raw intensity of the director, scenes that could easily go down in history as some of the most damaging items ever imposed on human eyes. The hotel scene and the first self-mutilation scene are intensely focused displays of damaging self-eroticism, but then there are the pool scene and the dinner scene, two beacons of highly expressive, highly personal horror. The pool scene shows Esther announcing the obtaining of a big promotion to dumbfounded colleague (and school friend) Sandrine in the posh sports complex comprised within their office building. Sandrine is obviously jealous and she throws the appropriate stare at her friend. She is so jealous in fact, that when three bathing dudes take a hold of Esther, and try to shove her in the pool, she doesn’t react one bit, despite the fact that she knows full well about her friend’s injury. In this dramatically crucial scene, Esther pathetically holds on to Sandrine’s chair, screaming for help that never comes. It is only when one of the three dudes spots a piece of bandage protruding from under her pants that they all decide to let go. But then they also leave Esther with some bloodied beige pants and the face of a poor woman humiliated beyond belief. The symbolic power of this scene derives less from its contents, than the masterful way in which it is shot, with rhythm as the key to understanding’s Esther’s panic, and subsequently, the importance of Sandrine’s treason. The pale blood soiling the pale fabric, revealed through a skillful pan is the cherry on top of this impeccable scene.

Esther is left vulnerable by Sandrine's treason.

But then, there is the dinner scene, a vibrant testimony to one’s perceived inadequacy when threading the unsure waters of high society and a monument to crafty filmmaking. It shows Esther at the height of her uncertainty while discussing marketing strategies and European tourism with three knowledgeable business people. After agreeing to a sip of high-quality wine, she starts downing glass after glass of the tangy red stuff, feeling all the more inadequate as a drunken stupor sets in. And so the conversation rages on, with the protagonist keeping her interventions to a minimum, smiling awkwardly instead of attempting potentially disastrous replies to the trio’s self-assured ramblings. At some point, she even starts imagining her arm dissociated from her body, as foreshadowed in a earlier scene. To insure that her arm is still part of her, and to distill some of the stress inherent to her ongoing professional failure, she starts slicing her arm with passion, plunging her knife’s edge directly into the folds of her skin and twisting it with rage. 

Thanks to some sharp editing and a truly inspired turn by De Van, both the intensity of Esther’s self-destructive passion, and the overwhelming nature of her unease come across seamlessly. The intellectual ramblings of her counterparts, their incessant flow of would-be high-flying remarks about tourism and the importance of culture-specific marketing techniques saturates the soundtrack, but it is Esther’s location outside of these ramblings, and on the verge of sheer madness that strikes us even more poignantly. The result is a very dense scene where we can pinpoint Esther’s untold suffering with every awkward smile and every sideway glance made by her colleagues. The whole situation is made all the more desperate thanks to the graphic bloodletting we get to witness from a passionately unhappy individual. Even the cuts away from the gory close-ups of Esther’s bloody arm fail to really comfort us, making our heart race instead with the perspective of seeing it again. With things so quickly getting out of hand, this dinner scene proves to be an engulfing maelstrom of violent impressions that drags us along for the ride, and as such, a testament to the efficiency of the whole film as a powerful punch to the gut.

The dinner scene is a testament

to De Van's skill as a filmmaker. 

Thanks to a marvelous performance in front, and behind the camera, newcomer Marina De Van herein manages to craft one of the most intriguing and challenging debut features in recent memory and a film that will surely go down in the annals of genre cinema. Its sheer power derives not only from the uncompromising display of passionate extremities that it contains, but also from a certain knack for editing raw scenes of tension. As such, De Van could readily challenge many seasoned vets, and even outdo them thanks to the edge provided by her very personal take on the material at hand. All in all, Dans ma peau is a major achievement and a must see for anyone who likes to see raw truth on celluloid. Be warned however, this one is not for the squeamish, or anybody who won’t accept self-cannibalism as the passionate underside of obesity.

4/5   A daft, challenging film, Dans ma peau is a mesmerizing debut by courageous Marina De Van and a monument to the power of raw emotion in the process of artistic creation. 

The Perfect Host (2010)

The Perfect Host was programmed at Fantasia a few years back, but I didn’t buy a ticket for fear that the film would be too broad for my tastes. Even after picking up a DVD copy in some random bargain bin, I was still convinced that it would prove to be a generic, albeit well-written thriller set in camera, sort of a character study focused on the limited interactions between a psychotic host and his guests. In reality, the film proved to be even broader than I first thought, crossing over at will between psycho thriller and serious crime drama in a confused bid to create artificial depth for itself, and to forcedly lengthen the runtime. The whole thing isn’t even set in camera. That would’ve been way too hard to sustain. The narrative rather spills all over the place, helplessly trying to seep into every crevasse of our resolve, leaving TV actor David Hyde Pierce squarely in charge of piloting a vehicle headed for nowhere in particular.

The premise here is quite familiar, but given some fake, unneeded depth thanks to the aforementioned mix-up of film genres. At first, we are acquainted with John, a petty criminal on the run from the LAPD after a bank robbery. When his license plate number is mentioned on the radio, the man suddenly starts feeling unsafe about driving around, and decides to find a place to hide instead. That’s how he ends up on Warwick’s posh porch. By pretending that they share a mutual friend, the bank robber even manages to get inside Warwick’s luxurious house, eavesdropping on the preparation of a very special dinner party. At first, the courteous host seems candid enough, lapping up every one of John’s incongruous answers to his incessant questions. At some point, however, his guest is backed into a corner as he starts running out of lies. That is when his incompetence finds refuge in violence.

John is just a run-of-the-mill thief, or is he?

You probably won't care about the answer...

Picking up a butcher’s knife, John takes Warwick hostage, unaware that he has been sipping dope-laced wine for a while now.  You see, Warwick is a very resourceful psycho, and he’s been ready for John even before he ended up on his doorstep, having prepared a special bottle for the occasion. Momentarily waking up from his forced slumber, John then finds himself tied to a chair around the dinner table where his host is entertaining a bevy of imaginary socialites. And from this pivotal role reversal, the plot starts to unfold...  and crumble. The victim has now become the victimizer, and our sympathy for the home invader starts being increasingly solicited through a series of flashbacks exposing John’s troubled past as well as the sentimental details of his unlawful scheme. This opens up the way for a dreary second half in which the interplay between the hunter and its prey spills into the shockingly familiar realm of police thrillers as John is let loose by his captor only to be chased through the ugly streets of L.A.

How can I convey the appreciation one should derive from this vaguely intriguing little thriller? I guess that it depends on one’s appreciation of David Hyde Pierce (an actor mostly famous for his long-lasting role as Dr. Niles Crane on Frasier). After all, the man is directly in charge of propelling the narrative here, with baby-faced Clayne Crawford being a mere cog in Warwick’s schemes. As for the supporting cast, it is not even given the opportunity to shine, being instead relegated to a bunch of bit parts. In fact, all of the peripheral characters that they portray are almost detrimental to the plot, as they gluttonously devour screen time without adding much to the narrative but some unnecessary twists.

To be honest, everything around Warwick seems like mere artifice, except for his luxurious living/dining room, whose depth proves surprisingly useful, even crucial to the mise-en-scène by allowing the director to alternatively conceal and reveal the characters’ position in space. The rich locale thus becomes a theatrical space tailor-made to befit the needs of an in-camera thriller. Once John is tied-up and at the mercy of Warwick, all suspense becomes insured by the two characters’ lines of sight and relative position to one another. This is emphasized by the fact that the host often loses track of his guest, allowing him to wiggle out of his restraints, or to equip a crucial prop. That is how suspense is maintained, by locating the action in a finite space and making the relationship between captor and captive the center of attention. Further digressions are only harmful to the integrity of the thriller.

Warwick's dining room is a perfect space

for a thriller to unfold.

Being the cornerstone of tension-building that it is, it’s a shame that the living room set is eventually shelved in order to pursue the secondary narrative thread elaborated in the first half of the film, the one concerning John’s sad money-making scheme and his running from the law. I lost almost all interest in the film immediately after the narrative shift that brought the action away from the psycho’s abode and into the ugly streets of L.A. for it meant that all suspense had suddenly evaporated in favor of pursuing an awkwardly dramatic story of abused trust and blind dedication. To me, the very raison-d’être of the film had suddenly vanished, and its edge suddenly become dull as the narrative started to thread more and more familiar waters. If the surprisingly dull twist ending is any indication, the narrative should’ve ended far earlier than it did…

Contrarily to most thrillers, or horror films for that matter, The Perfect Host is very intriguing during the initial exposition of the characters, but far less so once we get acquainted with them. Despite some strong performances by the two leads, who portray their characters to the best of their abilities, one can hardly overlook the poor conception of these characters. Hence, it is the first half-hour of the film that provides the most thrills. The mystery is still whole and impenetrable at that point and the interplay between Pierce and Crawford is at the height of its complexity. With both men playing nice guy by throwing fake smiles and good manners around, with Warwick’s initial candor appearing almost childlike and John’s violent nature being only slightly veiled by his awkward farce, the perspective of an explosive confrontation between them, which would reveal their true character, becomes increasingly unnerving. It is only when the masks have fallen that the shortcomings of the screenplay are revealed along with the director’s inability to maintain suspense throughout.

The initial encounter between John and Warwick

is the highlight of the film.

The first narrative feature that sticks out like a sore thumb is just how overdetermined Warwick’s psychosis actually is. Seeing how convinced he is that imaginary people are interacting with him, it takes a real stretch of the imagination to figure out how he can be so composed in society and able to maintain a high-ranking position in his work place. Most importantly, that psychosis feeds a certain compulsion he has to constantly digress from his dialogue with John in order to “entertain” other guests floating around his living room. This completely dispels the illusion of control necessary to make his victim’s plight seem inescapable and to subsequently heighten the sense of tension one might derive from that plight. In the case of John, we are also asked to make some arduous perceptual contortions in order to accept a tear-inducing background that comes in stark contrast with his initial brutality and lack of refinement. Luckily, the plot doesn’t unfold in a purely linear fashion. But while this helps complexify the plot, it often breaks some hard-earned sense of tension by generating cuts away from the living room and into random locales with various degrees of relevance. In turn, this creates a hodge-podge of important dramatic issues that will need to be addressed in an all-encompassing finale that diminishes the impact of every one of those important dramatic issues.

In the end, The Perfect Host is a misguided attempt at creating a singular thriller by mashing up ill-defined genre boundaries and spiking a would-be realistic crime drama with some eccentric humor. Unfortunately, David Hyde Pierce is the only actor in the cast that seems able to handle the subtler aspects of the screenplay by delivering some outrageous lines of dialogue with just the right amount of self-consciousness. In contrast, the two actors portraying his police buddies are absolutely incapable of delivering a satiric twist on their own, straight-faced lines. But while the film is far from perfect, it still manages to deliver some tasty dialogue (delivered by Pierce with all the suaveness of a seasoned vet) and some very cost-effective production values (the film’s total budget being estimated at around 1,000,000$). For those two reasons, it might yet be considered like a mild success.

2½/5    David Hyde Pierce’s enthusiastic performance as the titular character helps keep this flawed, but earnest indie effort afloat.

I Saw the Devil (2010)

I’ve seen some brutal revenge films in my day (I Spit on Your Grave, Mother’s Day and The Horseman come to mind), but nothing quite as potent as I Saw the Devil, Korea’s umpteenth such offering alongside Park Chan Wook’s world-renowned Sympathy trilogy. This 142-minute opus might actually be the ultimate revenge film and the reference point for all future films of the same ilk. You could say that it is the Citizen Kane of revenge films, not only because it is surprisingly well crafted, with splendid art direction and amazing camerawork to boot, but because of its sheer brutality, which perfectly captures the self-defeating, cyclical nature of revenge and the useless bloodshed that it involves.

Fueled by the lowest, most brutal masculine impulses, which themselves are intrinsically tied to « violent » film genres, I Saw the Devil is an in-depth study of visceral violence, its raison d’être and dire consequences. With a number of stabbings and slashings exceeding the three digits, each of which actually contributes to character development, the film is bound to find a comfortable niche amongst open-minded film critics and genre enthusiasts alike. Add to that a bone-chilling turn by Min-sik Choi as one of the greatest, most terrifying villains in movie history, and you’ve got a well-deserving contemporary classic.

Violence is in the foreground here.

As in all revenge films, the premise here is rather simple and straightforward. Protagonist loves girl, girl gets brutally murdered (and raped, and decapitated, and dismembered…), then guy goes mad, chasing the antagonist in order to dish out pain in equal measure to his own. What sets I Saw the Devil apart from the myriads of similarly-themed offerings that came before is the intricate nature of the protagonist’s plan. You see, our cop friend actually catches the killer halfway into the film. That is when we understand that his revenge plot is far more complex, and far more akin to the killer’s own M.O. than we had first envisioned. It is not enough for him to break the villain’s arm and beat him to a pulp because there is a dark impulse inside of his soul, a terrifying impulse that will make him go overboard.

Having made a promise to his dead wife according to which he would inflict as much pain to the killer as was inflicted upon her, Kim Soo-hyeon sets up an elaborate trap for his nemesis, tracking his movement only to lengthen his agony, dishing out supplementary punishment whenever he sees fit. In doing so, not only does he become a monster himself, but he also gives his foe sufficient latitude to strike back, thus thickening the plot a great deal, allowing it to curl around and fall back on itself like the snake eating its own tail. As the visceral outbursts of violence multiply, so too does the trail of corpses grows exponentially and each of the two main characters start crumbling under the weight of their testosterone-filled testicles.

When you stare long enough into the abyss...

While the “revenge film” is not a genre per se, one could call it a concatenation of other genres, most prominent of which are the action, thriller and horror genres, all of which contribute narrative devices and visual patterns to the “revenge” lexicon. Here, all three of those genres are mastered to perfection. Featuring epic, nervously edited fight scenes involving a wide array of blunt weapons, slashing weapons, stabbing weapons and firearms, the film could easily rival any serious martial arts extravaganza. Then, there are some nearly unbearable torture sequences that could challenge any Saw film, but without all the moralistic bullshit, nor any of the traps’ needless complexity. There are no elaborate contraptions to contend with, no ticking time bombs or intricate mechanical devices, but only rusty guillotines and knives. Violence is not intellectualized here, but instead made visceral, transposed if you will, into the world of animals where it belongs. Add to that an inquisitive camera that probes its surroundings like a hardened gumshoe, as well as a maelstrom of a plot that twists and turns toward a gut-wrenching finale, and you’ve got a surprisingly well-rounded film that has managed to please serious critics and undiscriminating gorehounds alike.

I Saw the Devil is an exemplary genre entry that should please all the gents the world over. Unfortunately, that is where a crack develops in the film’s façade: it will unlikely appeal to feminine sensibilities, especially in light of the fact that women are herein depicted almost exclusively as the helpless objects of male violence. Although it does criticize the testosterone-fueled fantasies of the protagonist by likening him to the monster he is tracking, the film also taps directly into the spectator’s own macho impulses to deliver a high-octane piece of entertainment. Whatever your sensibility dictates however will not change the fact that the film is entirely coherent in its desire to depict a form of visceral logic that defies the rationality of the common thriller. By vying to frame a human being’s primordial drive to forcefully submit another’s flesh to his own dominion, the film cannot avoid violence, but should embrace it instead. I Saw the Devil is a study of violence, its dire consequences and its roots deep within our most secret, most primordial selves. As such, it must display its object as proof, which in turn helps create a raw narrative that rings truer than any police thriller, or romantic comedy ever will, despite their incidental brushings with true human emotions.

Testosterone-fueled fantasies see women

as mere collectibles.

It should be obvious at this point in the review, but while the brutal violence onscreen is the film’s most salient feature, one cannot tag I Saw the Devil as pure exploitation. Sure, the screenplay is entirely derivative and its lesson about the evils of retaliatory violence somewhat overdetermined, but the aesthetics involved in its elaboration go way beyond the reach of any other revenge film. There is more here than just stating what is wrong and what is right or challenging the spectator’s own right-wing inclinations. There is a dense, and breathtaking world about to leap from the screen, and the sublimeness of this world derives directly from the technical proficiency involved in its creation.

To me, the most striking technical feature of the film is the camerawork. The camera is always on cue here, and always focused on the most relevant detail of the scene, hovering around the scenery to reveal more and more details, each more increasingly relevant than the last. It is a detective probing the space for clues, enlarging the scope of the protagonist’s own investigation with utmost efficiency, adding a touch of subtlety to his crude, brutish methods. As such, it becomes a player in the story, a quiet observer that reveals every new atrocity with unflinching, and unnerving aplomb, always keeping us at the edge of our seat by sharpening our sense of anticipation to absolute dreadfulness.

The camera does not merely move around the scenery however. It also photographs that scenery with great care, thus creating a rich visual landscape full of unforgettable set pieces. One should know exactly what to expect from the camera by simply looking at the very first scene, a testament to the impeccable photography and virtuoso camerawork to come. Being a tracking shot taken from inside the killer’s vehicle, it probes the snowy scenery with the same inquisitive candor as that to come, piercing through the darkness to constantly reveal new terrain, but without ever revealing the big picture. It also manages to perfectly frame the elegant quietude of snow, its purity and subsequent soiling with the blood of the protagonist’s wife.

Obvious motifs are saved by the sheer

quality of their execution.

The motif is quite common and it has been used a million times before. The whiteness of a surface is soiled by the crimson blood of a murder victim, creating a violent visual contrast between innocence (or the orderly nature of things) and the monstrosity of a killer (the intrusion of a chaotic element to disturb the orderly nature of things). Here, it is depicted through a tracking shot that originates from the snow-covered roof of the victim’s car, then moves down to frame the trail of blood extending from the driver’s seat to the body of the victim as she is dragged through the snow. Now, the motif might be quite overdetermined, but that’s without taking into account the sheer beauty of the scene, and the perfect aspect of those little specs of snow. There is some incredible beauty in the world, something almost otherworldly on which the camera lingers. But then, there are horrible things lying just beyond the threshold of beauty, things which the camera fully embraces in its depiction of our schizoid reality. So, there is blood-soiled snow, but then there is the mortuary chrysalis from which the victim emerges as the next scene opens. The imagery is quite powerful here: the victim-woman ripping apart a plastic bag wrapped around her like the butterfly emerging into the world only to be pinned down by a collector. Again, natural beauty is soiled by the evils of man. In the next scene, the portrait becomes complete as the young woman’s severed head is found in a quiet pond. The water is gorgeous and pure, and the large hairball at the bottom of the pond peacefully wavers along with the algae. But then, the hair unwraps to reveal a dead face and beauty is soiled again. Hence the camera once again contributes its commendable attention to details to the ongoing process of creating a truly affective visual landscape.

The natural landscapes may be crucial in creating a dichotomy between everyday beauty and the horror of man, but the impeccable art direction also contributes its fair share to the film’s iconography by creating mood-specific settings. The killers herein being characterized beyond the scope of normal thrillers, the background artisans working on the film have zealously created some memorable murder dens for them, dens full of various props hailing from different eras, and which suggest a wickedly postmodern take on psychoanalysis. In turn, there appears a stark opposition between the stuffy, disorganized interiors of all killers involved (one of which is a remorseless cannibal) and the orderly, tidy, but empty interiors of the good guys’ homes. By thus making intricate visual patterns to emulate the different characters’ states of mind, each with their own elaborate take on life, I Saw the Devil easily rockets past the competition and into the realm of high art.

I Saw the Devil offers us a privileged look 

into the mind of a killer.

While praise must be given to everyone involved technically, none of the film’s success could be fathomable without the commanding presence of thespian Min-sik Choi as the main antagonist. By creating, and sustaining, a man without pain, without fear and without remorse, he seamlessly manages to earn a spot as one of the greatest film villains of all times. Say what you will about grandiloquent James Bond villains wearing suits, repressed slashers from Italian giallo or elegant serial killers from high-end Hollywood thrillers, but they will never outdo the present monster, a testosterone-filled beast that acts on impulses as if they were orders from God. The man is not neurotic, nor repressed. He is a simple psychopath with the drive of a wild beast, and as such, he is seamlessly portrayed by Min-sik. When asked by a supplicant first victim not to kill her, he mundanely asks: “Why not?”, then proceeds to dismember her. The fact is that there is no greater agenda to this man, no greater goal or revenge plot that he needs to carry. He simply does whatever he wants, whenever he wants, without ever having a second thought about it. His hand is swift and instinctive in delivering blows with blunt objects, then the rest of his body is swift in taking what he wants from his captive female victims, then maiming them to dispose of their remnants. He is a man to constantly indulge in immediate gratification, and as such a terrifying onscreen presence emanating from a society where the efforts necessary to do good are often overlooked in favor of the availability of evil…

While certainly overlong, and overly violent, for many moviegoers, I Saw the Devil should be required viewing for any genre fan, as it encompasses many flawlessly executed genre staples under the larger banner of the revenge film. The quality of the filmmaking at hand actually makes this offering far more than a simple exploitation film, allowing it to shift into the realm of respectable, “art” cinema. It also helps emphasize the ongoing cleavage between American cinema and Asian cinema regarding the quality of genre cinema. Whereas mumblecore and B-series now seem like the only saving grace for Hollywood, revenge films have now gone mainstream in Korea, earning praise from international critics everywhere they go. Still, you have to wonder to what extent the Korean obsession with revenge plots hails from an American legacy…

4,5/5    A contemporary genre classic by any standard, at once an extremely well-crafted and powerful revenge film featuring one the greatest villains in film history, as well as a superior meditation on the very nature of violence. 

The Dark Hours (2005)

When I first saw The Dark Hours in theaters, I remember thinking it was proof of the shifting hegemony in the realm of genre cinema, away from the US toward marginal film industries across the world. Produced with public money in the icy wilderness of Canada, this humble psychological thriller is no novelty, nor does it hail any sort of historical importance. It is simply an honest and well-crafted film, with an airtight screenplay that focuses on character development as key to tension building. There’s also some surprising depth to the story, which becomes increasingly intricate and dense as the mystery unfolds, not unlike the highly involving performances offered by every actor involved. With a series of twists highlighting the introspective nature of the editing, the final act screeches to a halt, leaving us panting and jarred from a lean, unrelenting ride that began in the very first shot. From start to finish, The Dark Hours displays none of the fat that usually impairs similar thrillers. There are no cuts to a police station, a hospital or a relative’s house. There is only a handful of dedicated actors and a dynamite script for them to follow. All of these elements help make the film one of the purest, most efficient genre offerings out there.

A handful of dedicated actors, a good script and

a cabin in the woods is all you need to make a good film.

Samantha Goodman is a brilliant psychiatrist specialized in criminal pathology, but she’s got one major problem. Her own brain harbors a tumor, which has started growing after years of stability, leaving her victim to increasing feelings of helplessness and disorientation. Following a heated confrontation with a violent inmate from her posh mental institute during a release hearing, Samantha is ordered to take a well-needed break away from the stress of everyday life. Her Hippocratic Oath is in jeopardy you see, because of the cold, nearly inhuman way in which she handled the controversial case. On a whim, the good doctor then decides to visit her estranged husband in a remote cabin, where he has barricaded himself to work on his latest novel. Since the man has enlisted the help of Samantha’s sister Melody (tasty British Columbian Iris Graham), Samantha drops in very much like a hair on the soup. But her husband’s hypothetical infidelity soon becomes the least of her worries as the cabin is invaded by a pair of tormentors lead by Harlan Pyne, a former patient of Samantha’s who harbors a very specific grudge against her. Things are simple enough at first, with Harlan turning tables on his former psychiatrist by submitting her to a series of cruel tests, but the plot soon thickens, allowing buried secrets to surface and put some unbearable pressure on Samantha’s already fragile psyche. Will she be able to sustain the ordeal and save her husband and sister, or will she crumble under the weight of circumstances? You won’t have to wait so long to find out…

There is nothing superfluous in The Dark Hours, nothing that hasn’t been carefully planned and thought through. More importantly, there is nothing that was unduly added, nothing to divert our attention from the crux of the narrative and the unbearable tension inherent to it. That is truly the biggest asset of the film, and one that questions the efficiency of all so-called in-camera thrillers: sustained suspense. I’ve seen films like The Perfect Host, Red State and Devil recently and they were all self-defeating in the same way, using parallel editing to transport the action away from where it matters in a bid to strengthen what is thus revealed to be a weak premise. I never understood why, at the dramatic height of a scene, one would feel the need to cut away from the action to an empty police station where dead-eyed deputies are lazily drinking coffee. To me, such a practice is proof of the director’s inability to really sustain interest in his own material. It is an admission of powerlessness, and something that The Dark Hours carefully avoids.

The screenplay here is nearly flawless, with the “funny games” device being used in a particularly relevant way. Making himself out to be the former victim of Samantha’s bad treatments, Harlan’s project seems justified at times, even more so than the good doctor’s. His insistence on the “bettering” of his former psychiatrist bears the same undertones as that of the psychiatric treatment he is mimicking. Hence, the very validity of the discipline is put into question, especially where it brushes with matters of ethics. The entire issue of criminal insanity is also put into question here, with obvious implications for recent news items such as the Connecticut and Colorado shootings in the US, as well as the Magnotta and Turcotte murders in Quebec. At the center of the debate is Samantha’s own take on the issue, one that proves to be absolutely selfish and unprofessional (as is foreshadowed by the opening scene where she grills a repentant, 15-year inmate). Given such a complex debate, the ever-elusive notion of nuance becomes crucial in appraising who the real bad guy is amidst a sea of shifting control and hidden intentions. Straightforward as it may first appear, the narrative becomes increasingly intricate as time elapses, and increasingly tied to Samantha’s psychological decay, raising important issues about moral rectitude in the face of personal drama and humanity in the dealings with the criminally insane.

The reunion of doctor and patient is crucial in appraising

the role of psychiatry and its relationship to the criminally insane.

The screenplay however wouldn’t have soared to such heights if it weren’t for two compelling performances by Kate Greenhouse and Aidan Devine as Samantha and Harlan respectively. Both of their characters being schizoid in nature, the two actors had the ungrateful task of both soliciting our sympathy and our disgust, all the while trying to involve our humanity in the process of appraising their actions. Samantha was once a cold professional, a woman in control of herself and others. But she is now a walking specter with decreasing brain functions, and an increasingly slippery power for self-containment. Greenhouse’s performance is pretty amazing in the fact that it conveys both these traits almost seamlessly. This very performance actually landed her a handful of awards across the festival circuit, including the Best Actress award at Fantasia and PiFan. As for Devine, he manages to imbue his character with enough charisma to make it round, and not your usual single-use psycho. His Harlan is no nihilist. Instead, he has a strong sense of justice, a slightly warped one, but a strong one nonetheless. The softness with which he issues orders and threats gives us no illusion as to who is truly in control. It also makes us weirdly sympathetic to his cause, which as I’ve said before, becomes increasingly justified as the plot unfolds. 

Harlan is a human being, and not a monster. That is crucial to our understanding of the film and its moral stance, making Devine’s performance equally crucial in conveying that humanity, a nuanced reality if ever there was one. The three remaining characters, Samantha’s husband and sister as well as Harlan’s lackey, although subservient to the tug-of-war between the protagonist and her former patient, are still crucial to the idea of moral rectitude that permeates the story. Each of them being romantically involved in a series of incongruous love triangles, they feed the anger and uncertainties of the two leads, constantly posing gestures that are heavy with consequences. Theirs might be more subdued roles, but they are also interpreted with aplomb, leaving almost nothing to be desired from the cast.

The impressionistic, introspective nature of editing, the aggressive heightening of background noise to depict Samantha’s increasing neurosis, and the multi-layered linking of flashbacks contained in the final act all go way beyond the scope of the typical thriller, allowing the director to use a fairly limited amount of footage in unsuspected and highly relevant ways. And while Samantha’s mental ailment allows the screenplay to twist and turn beyond the scope of reality, it is never used like a cheap device. In fact, it soon becomes a dramatic epicenter from which narrative threads are retrieved, woven around, only to return to their source, sort of a wool ball, which you could scrutinize for hours without finding an end. That said, the many twists contained near the conclusion will certainly have some spectators cringing, but for me, they are mere knots in an infinitely complex whole. They are our partial understanding of something that actually escapes our grasp. Hence, the film's ability to depict the true nature of mental illness, and the feeling of desperation one could derive from it. This causes the psycho killer archetype to deflate into something entirely more realistic and meaningful, lifting the film up from the depths of formula unto the higher realm of academics, thus also extending a mirror to the protagonist in an intricate and somewhat brilliant game of equivalence.

Introspection is the name of the game as Samantha

experiences various levels of consciouness.

The Dark Hours may rely on a dated premise, but you shouldn’t let that fool you. It is an entirely worthy film, one with unforeseen depths (both symbolic and ethical), some solid performances by the two leads, affective editing, cost-efficient production values and a dynamite screenplay to tie it all together. More importantly, it is perfectly lean, with absolutely no dull moment and a short runtime (80 minutes) to match. From the very first shot, the film grips you and it doesn’t let go until the final shot, curling back on itself when necessary, planting doubts in the foundation of reality, and eventually shaping up to be both a relevant study of mental illness and an exploitation thereof for the glory of genre cinema. Some highly recommended viewing.

***1/2  A nearly perfect thriller based on a surprisingly profound screenplay interpreted by a talented cast of well-directed actors.