Demain dès l’aube (2009) - film review

Paul and Mathieu are two brothers who have both allowed themselves to be overtaken by a childhood passion.  Paul’s obsession is historical battles, Mathieu’s is music.  But whilst Mathieu has made a successful career of his obsession and is now a world-class pianist, Paul lives in a dream world, participating in authentic re-enactments of Napoleonic battles.  Concerned that Paul’s hobby may be taking a sinister turn, his bed-ridden mother implores his older brother to make an attempt to bring him back to reality.  The only way that Mathieu can do this is by entering Paul’s world...

Demain dès l’aube is, in a similar vein to director Denis Dercourt’s previous film La Tourneuse de pages (2006), an ingeniously crafted study in obsession that is both chilling and strangely hypnotic.  Instead of a burning desire for revenge, this time it is a morbid fascination with historical battles which takes hold of the main protagonist and lures him into a dark world where he becomes prey to his own self-destructive impulses.  The film has the same brooding atmosphere as Dercourt’s last feature, the same eerie dreamlike composition and unsettling character ambiguities, but it is far more effective because it conveys more forcefully the dark derangement that overtakes the main character as he slowly loses his grip on reality, or rather exchanges one reality for another.

Vincent Perez, absent from French cinema for the last four years, makes a magnificent return in the lead role of Mathieu.  As the concert pianist who, in the throes of midlife crisis, is tasked with rescuing his younger brother from a dangerous addiction to Napoleonic war games, Perez gives what is almost certainly his finest screen performance to date.  His is a haunting portrait of a man who, being of artistic temperament and uncertain of his own identity, finds the prospect of an alternative reality strangely alluring.  He is a kind of modern Orpheus who, to bring his younger brother back to reality, must enter the dark and deadly place of the imagination, a place from which he may not return.  As he soon discovers, living in the past can be a very dangerous occupation, particularly if you have a psychotic character defect which makes it easy to overstep the bounds of reason.

Perez’s co-star Jérémie Renier is just as impressive as the younger brother who revels in his bizarre timeshare existence, spending half of his time in present day France working in a depot and the other half in the early 19th Century with his Napoleon-obsessed buddies.  Renier’s portrayal complements Perez’s beautifully.  Although Paul (Renier) may initially appear to be the one who is in trouble, so absorbed is he in his war games that he looks as if he can no longer distinguish between reality and fantasy, it is actually Mathieu (Perez) whom we should be concerned about.  Whilst they take their games desperately seriously, Paul and his friends still have one foot in the real world and know there is a boundary that cannot be crossed.  By contrast, Mathieu fails to see this wall of reason and so he places himself and his brother in ever greater danger as his Napoleonic playacting sets free a side of his character that has been long suppressed.

Not only is Demain dès l’aube a far more satisfying and convincing study in obsession than the somewhat overhyped La Tourneuse de pages, it is also a technically superior production.  Dercourt displays far more inventiveness in his mise-en-scène and achieves a spine-chilling sense of reality, with the Napoleonic sequences no less authentic than those set in the present day.  The film has a distinctive ambiance that subtly exposes the sinister forces that lurk beneath the surface and allows the tension to build slowly but surely to a truly gripping climax.  Assisted by three of French cinema’s finest acting talents (we mustn’t overlook Aurélien Recoing, who is quite terrifying as the implacable Capitaine Déprées), Dercourt delivers a stylish, off-the-wall thriller that is as compelling as it is creepy.

© James Travers 2010

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