Night Shift

Director/co-writer Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel, Gemma Bovery) shines a light on the role of the police in modern France with her new film, Night Shift. It starts promisingly, showing the same situations in the same day from the perspective of the three central characters (similar to the money exchange sequence from Tarantino’s Jackie Brown). This format teases out the personalities of each officer, revealing a tad more about them as the timeline repeats; one character appears out of focus in the background but is front and centre on the next pass, another is completely off screen except for his voice and is later shown at an adjoining table. Sadly, this style is only maintained for the first act, the rest of the film reverting to a traditional narrative for the titular night shift duty.

The three leads, Virginie (Virginie Efira), Aristide (Omar Sy) and Erik (Grégory Gadebois) volunteer to escort an illegal immigrant from a Parisian detention centre to Charles de Gaulle airport to be flown back to Tajikistan. On the way to the airport, it’s discovered that the detainee, Tohirov (Payman Maadi) will most likely be tortured or killed on his return. The way the officers treat this information varies depending on their mindset, their attitude to the job and their personal baggage. Virginie is sympathetic and her attempts to coax Tohirov to flee provide the tensest moments of the whole film. Aristide plays it cool, pretending not to care, driven by self-interest, only for his feelings for Virginie to sway him. Erik is assiduously by-the-book, ragingly dissatisfied with life and taken to sniffing alcohol as the next best option to falling off the wagon.

The theme of authority dealing with a moral wrong is pivotal in Night Shift. Whether characters from different frames of reference can arrive at a commonly shared sense of humanity is the whole nub of the film. This positing reflects the way we are introduced to each officer – there’s an alternate viewpoint each time, before and during the ‘prisoner transfer’. In acting as the focal point for the police officers’ uncertainty, Maadi is fantastic. He says very little, almost nothing in French or English, as his face shifts from desperation, to mistrust, to utter panic. He’s the standout here.

For all the worthwhile exploration of guilt and morality, via people operating under pressure, this film doesn’t quite fulfil its remit. It lacks a bit of grunt, it just isn’t gripping enough for the circumstances. It’s not a bad film by any means but it could have been much more.

Night Shift is showing at the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, which finishes in Perth on April 7th. 

[This review was also published on the Film Ink website - https://www.filmink.com.au/reviews/night-shift/]

See also:

A Romanian film called Police, Adjective (2009) directed by Corneliu Porumboiu looks at moral choices cops are faced with and David Leitch's Deadpool 2 (2018) has a different kind of prisoner transfer sequence. 

Mandibles

Mandibles is the latest film from French musician turned filmmaker, Quentin Dupieux (aka Mr. Oizo). It’s an odd film, veering between lovably surreal farce and nihilistic idiocy. The premise has our protagonists, Manu (Grégoire Ludig) and Jean-Gab (David Marsais), stumbling upon a grotesquely large fly in the boot of a car they’ve stolen. This scuppers the completion of a possibly dodgy job they’re on but these two will not be disheartened. Jean-Gab suggests training the huge fly, which he names Dominique, and putting it to work for them as a kind of thief drone – one that “doesn’t need batteries”.

The action takes place in a less than idyllic South of France where Manu and Jean-Gab lurch almost involuntarily from one ludicrous situation to another, all the while giving each other a nerdy hand-shake called ‘The Toro’. After some initial criminal tomfoolery, Manu is mistaken for someone else and invited to a country villa by some young women. Offer accepted, they take advantage of the free food and swimming pool but Jean-Gab has Dominique’s well-being on his mind, as well as the money-making scheme. He continues to train the fly until Agnès, played by Adèle Exarchopoulos, begins to suspect some funny business. Her character is a bit of a misstep. Agnès shouts when she speaks, supposedly due to a skiing accident and though the others don’t make fun of her disability, it still feels as though the audience is encouraged to do so. An attempt at drawing cheap laughs when there’s already plenty of the bizarre to go around.

Dupieux has form with this kind of anarchic story-telling; the lead in Rubber is a sentient, killer tyre, Deerskin is about a murderously manipulative jacket and this film features a unicorn bike, diamond dentures and an ‘unfortunate’ dog, as well as the massive insect. On the face of it, Mandibles appears to be a high concept gimmick crowbarred into a goofy buddy comedy but the themes of friendship and despair just manage to shine through the weirdness. There’s a nice sense of cyclical completion with opening and closing scenes taking place on the same desolate beach and a satisfying, if predictable final development with Dominique. Mandibles is mostly harmless, often senseless and occasionally amusing, and aside from Dupieux’s other works, reasonably anomalous.

This is showing as part of the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, which finishes April 7th. Listen to the podcast below for a chat with the director of Anarchy PR, Adriana Begovich.

See also:

There's a huge bee in Shane Black's The Nice Guys (2016) and it would probably be remiss of me not to mention David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) - though I can't actually remember seeing it.

[This review was also published on the Film Ink website - https://www.filmink.com.au/reviews/mandibles/]

Listen to "Adriana Begovich Interview" on Spreaker.

The Father

I was a little hesitant about The Father before going in. It looked austere, worthy, SERIOUS! These adjectives can often equate to dullness so I was chuffed to find that looks were pretty deceiving in this case. This is a tricksy little gem of a film. Sure, it has all those aspects mentioned above but it's handled more like a thriller to be unboxed, uncrinkled, smoothed out. Anthony Hopkins plays Anthony (bravely retaining the name), the father of the title, whose daughter, Anne, played by Olivia Colman, is struggling to deal with his creeping dementia. This manifests in Anthony falling out with carers, even accusing them of stealing and generally being a rude prick to everybody.

The genius of the story is the way it presents Anthony's mental disintegration from his perspective. Without going into detail, the audience is riding along with the father as he attempts to make sense of all the comings and goings in his flat. This unknowing perspective is unsettling and not a little frustrating, plonking us in the situation of someone who suffers thus. Hopkins is amazing, obstreperous one minute, pathetic and desperate the next. Colman matches him in intensity and in frailty. These are two barn-storming performances but the whole film is peppered with knife-edged acting - from Mark Gatiss to Olivia Williams to Imogen Poots and Rufus Sewell - they all nail it here.

The director is a French playwright called Florian Zeller and he has adapted The Father from his own hit play, with a little help from Christopher Hampton, who has a pretty enviable resume to his name. Coincidentally, Hampton penned the Mike Newell film The Good Father in 1985, also starring Anthony Hopkins. Howzabout that then? No word as yet on how any of this connects to the Roger Michell film of 2003, The Mother. I'd say not at all, but like Anthony says "I feel like I'm losing all my leaves".

The Father opens with advance screenings at the Luna on March 26th.

See also:

Another, more low-key pearl from Hokpins is in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day (1993) and on the theme of aging, Alexander Payne's Nebraska (2013) is pretty good.

The Dry

A bit late to this but I'm glad I decided to check it out. The Dry is a simmering, dusty mystery set in the drought-stricken Australian scrub. It's directed by Robert Connolly and co-written by Connolly and Harry Cripps, adapted from a novel by Jane Harper. Eric Bana plays Aaron Falk, a Melbourne-based federal police officer, who is urged by the parents of his old mate, Luke, to return to his hometown for said mate's funeral. Without going into the rabbit's hole, suffice to say, Aaron isn't entirely welcome in the town of Kiewarra (fictional, though Ballarat is mentioned as nearby). The crime leading to the death of Aaron's friend may or may not be linked to another crime 20 years before, which drove Aaron and his dad to abandon the town, but digging around for facts proves difficult. As one character says, "When you've been lying about something for so long, it becomes second nature."

The way the film winkles out the details of both crimes is masterfully done; offering a possibility, then taking it off the table. It's not too complicated but it does have a few plates spinning and managing this troublesome crockery is one of the film's strengths. Another is the cinematography of Stefan Duscio, which somehow makes the sharp, crackly, bloody irksome landscape of the Aussie bush look positively grand and majestic. The cast is superb, led by Bana in a low-key, guilt-tinged performance. It's good to see a few familiar faces like Julia Blake, Bruce Spence and John Polson but it's the young 'flashback' cast that shine here, especially BeBe Bettencourt and Joe Klocek. Keep an eye on them.

In those 1991 sequences, the river plays a big role. In the present, it's completely dried up. The harsh conditions and specifically, the lack of water, reflect Aaron's childhood, his lost love, his historical absconding from the town. Imagine the lyrics of Flame Trees by Cold Chisel and you're thereabouts. It's significant that when a local bogan tells Aaron to "Go back to where you came from", he doesn't remind him that he IS from there. Just like the water, Aaron is alien to the place now. The Dry is a great exploration of cagey, parochial, country town Australia. Not to be missed.

See also: On the theme of returning home, have a look at David Caeser's Mullet (2001). And for a more dystopian view of Aussie regional life, try Wake in Fright (1971), directed by Ted Kotcheff.

French Exit

There are some films that you know you're probably going to like five minutes after the opening shot. And then there are those that slot into the opposite camp. Much like French Exit. This is a comedy drama that's very light on comedy, and whatever drama there is happens in a baffling, nonsensical way. Patrick deWitt adapted this from his own novel and, though he won me over with his script for The Sisters Brothers, he quickly lost me with this one.

The film is nominally about a high class New Yorker, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and her boring son, Lucas Hedges, who one day find themselves insolvent. Oh-so-whimsically a plan is hatched to move to Paris and after selling most of their belongings, off they sail. And I mean sail, the dickheads taking a cruise liner rather than flying. That's the kind of film it is. Oh, and there's a fucking cat wandering around, serving no noticeable purpose until later in the film, when things really go to pot.

Pfeiffer is pretty good, considering what she's given to do and say but that's about all the nice I can lay on this steamer. Perhaps if deWitt had handed over his book to an objective eye and the director, Azazel Jacobs, had been worth his salt, this may have turned out differently. As it is, I haven't seen a more pretentious, irritating film for a long time.

See also:

I've just noticed that as famous as she is, Pfeiffer hasn't been in many good films. The best of hers that I can come up with is Richard Donner's Ladyhawke (1985) but I may be just being ironically nostalgic. For a much better deWitt adaptation, see the aforementioned The Sisters Brothers (2018), directed by the great Jacques Audiard.