Canicule (1984) - film review

Ageing American gangster Jimmy Cobb goes on the run after robbing a bank in Orleans.  Having buried his ill-gotten gains in a field, he takes refuge in an isolated country farm.  The latter belongs to an attractive, seemingly kind, young woman, Jessica, who offers to help Jimmy – provided he kills her bullying husband, Horace.  Also living on the farm are Jessica’s adventure-seeking son, Chim, her nymphomaniac sister-in-law Ségolène, and her drunken brother-in-law Socrate.  When they discover there is gangster in their home, each of them attempts to exploit the fact to his or her advantage…

With Canicule, director Yves Boisset pushes the crime-thriller genre in some unexpected directions and creates a work which is both original and unsettling, although somewhat less effective than some of his earlier hard-boiled policiers.  The rural setting, and Lee Marvin’s presence, gives the film the feel of a classic Hollywood western, something which makes the film’s level of violence slightly more acceptable than it might have been.

Many of Boisset’s later thrillers have a caustic wry edge to them and this is certainly apparent in Canicule.  It is possible – though only just – to enjoy this film as a black comedy.  The situation is so bizarre, the behaviour of the characters so eccentric, that it is hard to take the film seriously if it were not intended as an overt parody or carefully contrived send-up of the American-style thriller.

There is also a serious side to the film, in that it implies there are no clear moral divisions between criminals and apparently law-abiding citizens.  The behaviour of the country folk, locked in their cosy little microcosm, is every bit as damnable as that of the ruthless gangster Jimmy Cobb.  But whereas the latter has a purity of intent that gives him a kind of heroic charm, the former are utterly contemptible because their nastiness seems to be without explanation.  Jimmy Cobb’s presence on the farm does not corrupt the simple folk he encounters; instead, his arrival provides the catalyst which allows the worse side of their characters to assert itself, with disastrous consequences.  This is most apparent in the young boy Chim whose cynical manipulation of the situation at the end of the drama is the most worrying thing that Boisset has to show us.  It is a depressingly grim view of human nature but, sadly, it is not without a grain of truth.

© James Travers 2004

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