Aux abois (2005) - film review

Paris, in the 1950s.  Since his divorce, Paul lives alone in an apartment which he can no longer afford.  Unemployed, he cannot even find the money to pay his wife’s alimony and he is teetering on the verge of suicide.  On the advice of his friend Daubelle, Paul visits a money lender named Sarrebry.  On impulse, Paul kills Sarrebry with a hammer, steals money from him, and flees.  With the police thinking that the money lender was murdered by Daubelle, Paul enjoys the freedom to travel where he wants.  He heads to the north of France, where he meets Simone, a solitary woman who is trying to sell her large house.  Paul allows himself one last adventure before yielding to the mercy of the French judiciary...

Aux abois is one of those curious cinematic oddities that defies classification but which leaves a lasting impression in spite of its obvious imperfections.  Adapted from a well-known novel by Tristan Bernard, it can be described as French existentialist drama fashioned as a period road movie.  The blackly comedic plot revolves around a young man who, taken to the limit of what he can endure by his lack of money, makes a conscious decision to give up on the real world and instead creates for himself a fantasy life that will inevitably take him to the guillotine (or so he thinks).

The film’s quirky style is perfectly suited to the fanciful story it tells, with reality sliding into surrealism when we least expect it.  Its director, Philippe Collin, had only made two other films prior to this, the most recent being Les Derniers jours d’Emmanuel Kant (1994).  There is a bleakness to this film which is masked, in its first half, by a surfeit of dry comedy and unpredictability.  Towards the end, the main character’s sense of despair and ennui become overwhelming and we see the world through his eyes, as a place that is both absurd and pointless.  The film’s main selling point is Elie Semoun’s sombre and movingly introspective portrayal of a man who knows he has no future and performs an existential act (or two) to prove it.

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