Déjà mort (1998) - film review

A young pizza-deliverer, Andréa, introduces Laure, a 20 year old girl he barely knows, to his friend David, a wealthy layabout who is looking for models for his porn photo agency.  Eager for an easy escape from her dull life, Laure agrees to attend an audition with David’s boss, who proposes that she appears in hard core porn videos.  She does not realise – until it is too late – that she has entered a world of hedonistic excess and brutal self-destruction…

Déjà mort is the film which earned its director Olivier Dahan his reputation as a film director to watch out for.   It is a brave attempt to push the film noir genre into new territory, providing a shocking portrayal of the destructive effect of that deadly cocktail of ambition, money and drugs.  To the familiar character-based French thriller the film mixes in the sickening brashness of the youth culture movie and the graphic hard-edged violence of the latest breed of American crime thriller.

The result is not entirely satisfactory – despite generally good acting from its young cast (which includes rising stars Clément Sibony, Benoît Magimel and Zoé Félix), the film is marred by its excesses and an unconvincing plot.   In places the cinematographic gimmickry gets very tiresome, the soundtrack is excessive in places, and a number of scenes appear either badly directed or badly acted.  The film’s violent ending also just fails to hit its mark, appearing somewhat gratuitous, drawn-out and more comic than tragic.  Despite these blemishes, Déjà mort it is nonetheless a fairly impressive early effort from a director who clearly has a great deal of flair and imagination.

© James Travers 2002

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