Rating: D
Dir: Jacques Kluger
Star: Charlotte De Wulf, Felix Meyer, Bram Verrecas, Tine Roggeman
a.k.a. Deadly Lust
It’s always a bit of a red flag when a film is released under a title which is radically different from the one originally chosen by the makers. Especially when the new title feels like it was spat out by an AI trained on mid-nineties Cinemax thrillers. I will say, “deadly” is probably not too inaccurate here. The problem is, I would be more inclined to go with “deadly dull”, perhaps with a side-dish of “deadly confusing.” The original title roughly means “remembrance of death”, something designed to evoke an appreciation of life’s impermanence. I guess if you squint hard, this counts – albeit only in an “Well, that’s seventy-five minutes nearer the grave for me” way.
Events unfold in flashback, from the point of view of Fleur (De Wulf), who is lying in a hospital bed. What got her there? Good question. It appears to be a result of a birthday party for her boyfriend, Jules (Meyer). He’s excited because he thinks he’s finally going to get to have sex with Fleur, a prospect about which she is significantly less excited. Many of their friends and acquaintances are also there. An oce-lot of alcohol is going to be consumed, and it seems likely that booze is not the only mind-altering substance being taken – whether wittingly or not. This may help explain Fleur’s increasing concern at the presence, real or not, of a mysterious robed figure.
It feels as if Kluger, making his feature debut, has been heavily influenced by Gaspar Noé. In particular, this is similar to Climax, which also tells of a youthful party getting derailed by drink and drugs. Though in Kluger’s defense, this appears to have come out a couple of months before Noé’s film premiered at Cannes. But Kluger’s lack of experience seems telling, and this has perilously little to offer beyond being good-looking. There is a needlessly mangled narrative, and characters who are so unlikable, I would fake an epileptic fit to escape, were I to find myself at a party with them. Seriously, if these students are a representative sample of the youth of today, let’s just make it the cockroaches’ time, shall we?
In the interests of full disclosure, I will admit my attention was not entirely focused on the film by the end, and may be a contributing element to the fact I’m less than certain about what was happening. Oh, individual scenes made sense. The fat DJ gets in a fight with someone over french fries. Jules’s friend has the hots for Fleur. Someone gets raped. Someone else gets raped. [Told you there was a Noé influence] However, these singularly fail to gel into anything approaching a meaningful narrative. And a film does not have the “right” to your attention; it’s a privilege which must be earned, and from the early going, this isn’t putting in the necessary effort to achieve a passing grade. Maybe it intends to pull an all-nighter before the final.