Aux yeux du monde (1990) - film review

A slightly unbalanced young man, Bruno, hijacks a bus carrying school children.  Threatening to kill his hostages with a pistol, he orders the driver to take him to where his girlfriend lives.  There is no malice behind this act.  Bruno is doing it just to prove to his girlfriend that he loves her.  Unfortunately, the police view his act of bravado with less romantic eyes…

The plot may be simple and a little unsophisticated, but this is nevertheless a well-made and thought-provoking piece of cinema.  This is due mainly to Eric Rochart’s masterful direction and to some class A acting – particularly from the film’s star, Yvan Attal.  In his role as Bruno, Attal is simultaneously engaging yet frighteningly unpredictable, equally believable as the school children’s vicious aggressor and their story-telling friend.  This is an actor with great potential.

One reason why the film works so well is because of its schizophrenic handling of its subject, reflecting the mental instability of its central character, Bruno.   One moment we are watching a very tense thriller when anything could happen – well, what are you supposed to think when an unhinged young man with a power complex starts waving  a gun in front of cowering iFDF_ants?  Then – quite unexpectedly – the film relaxes and presents the character Bruno in a more positive, almost tender light.  It is this dangerous uncertainty that enables the film to sustain our attention so effectively.  We never quite know what is going to happen next.

Ultimately, like his hostages, we end up knowing the Bruno character so well that we begin to see the world through his eyes and he becomes almost a  sympathetic hero.  Whereas at the start of the film the police response appeared perfectly reasonable, at the film’s end we are inclined to take a different view.  The conclusion is a sobering one: in our safe sanitised world, there is no place for the colourful romantic hero.

© James Travers 2000

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