Karnaval (1999) - film review

After a dispute with his father, a young Arab man Larbi decides to leave his home town of Dunkirk and head south to start a new life in Marseilles.  Having missed the last train to Marseilles, he shelters from the rain in the  stairwell of a block of apartments, where he is disturbed by two carnival revellers, Béa and her husband Christian, a docker.  Larbi helps Béa carry her drunken husband to her apartment, and she thanks him by giving him a parting kiss.  Larbi leaves to catch his train, but then decides to stay in Dunkirk, realising that he has fallen in love with Béa…

Thomas Vincent’s debut film is a familiar love triangle tale set in the less familiar setting of the provincial working classes of a French coastal town at carnival time.  The film has as many weak points as strong points, but it has successfully established Vincent as one of the most promising new French film directors of the new millennium.

The spectacular vibrancy and colour of the film’s setting is unfortunately not matched by the calibre of the script, which is drab, directionless and lacking in originality.  There is some promising acting talent in the cast, but this is not fully exploited, and none of the principal characters appear to have any great depth.  Sylvie Testud is particularly poorly served, some risible dialogue hampering her performance throughout.  Only Clovis Cornillac (who plays Béa’s luckless husband) really manages to make something of the material he is given.

The film’s absolute nadir is the outrageous dog-burning scene near the end of the film.  Although the effect is competently realised, the response of the actors following the stunt is so flaccid and vacuous as to render the scene ludicrous.  After that, the film simply loses all credibility.

© James Travers 2002

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