Seul contre tous (1998)
Directed by Gaspar Noé

Film Review

This is probably the darkest film to be made in France to date, and it marks a very auspicious debut for the young film director Gaspar Noé.  Although in his mid-twenties, Noé shows remarkable maturity of style, and his film, whilst distinctly unpleasant to watch, has a tremendous impact.

The influence of other great French film directors is evident - certainly Jean-Luc Godard and possibly Claude Chabrol.   The harshness of the editing - with some very unsettling sudden cuts and close-ups - coupled with the use of bold textual messages is very evocative of Godard's style, and no less effective.  Noé uses other cinematographic devices to great effect - sudden fades to white at the end of a scene, when the viewer is anticipating a fade to black; the way the camera suddenly moves from a long-shot to a close-up - creating dynamism in an otherwise static scene.  This gimmickery is not used arbitrarily - Noé is not showing off his mastery of the cinematographic medium (which is quite evident after just ten minutes into the film).  On the contrary, these are the tools he uses to create a black, disturbing world - the world inside the head of a deranged, embittered man.  Rarely does an artist have such control over his medium to realise his objective and, at the same time, offer something fresh and original to the world.

The only place where the film falls down is in its ending.  To his credit, Noé delivers an ending that is completely contrary to the one we have been prepared to expect.  However - and it could simply be because the viewer feels that he has been cheated - the ending that Noé opts for has an awful stench of sentimentality about it.  There is nothing to prepare us for the sudden change in the butcher's state of mind - we have been persuaded that he is a psychopath, capable of killing an unborn baby, violently racist and homophobic, contemptuous of all women, including his own daughter - in short, a man who is way beyond redemption.  Consequently the sudden, last minute conversion feels very unconvincing and corrupts an otherwise coherent - albeit grossly unpleasant - piece of cinema.

Film Synopsis

A former butcher leaves prison to start a new life, but, with no money, and trapped in a loveless relationship with his pregnant girlfriend, he is full of rage and lust for revenge.  In his fifties, the man sees no future for himself and perceives the world to be a stinking cesspit populated by self-obsessed vermin.  After a violent confrontation, he walks out on his girlfriend and sets out for Paris, with a loaded gun in his pocket...