La Sentinelle (1992) - film review

Mathias, the son of diplomat in Berlin, is about to begin his training as a pathologist in Paris.  Whilst crossing the Franco-German border on a train, he is singled out and harassed by customs officials.  On his arrival in Paris, he is shocked to discover a mummified head in his luggage.  Intrigued by the mystery, Mathias starts to use his skills to analyse the head and discovers that it belongs to a recently deceased Westerner.  At the same time, he attempts to integrate with his fellow students, many of whom appear to have connections with the security services.  Unwittingly, Mathias finds himself the instrument in a deadly vendetta between a former agent, Bleicher, and a man who assisted Soviet scientists in crossing the Iron Curtain.

Avant-garde director Arnaud Desplechin followed his acclaimed short film La Vie des morts with this remarkable and very distinctive psychological thriller, which owes much to the novels of John Le Carré.   Desplechin is one a handful of directors in the past few decades who has brought an unusual artistic vision and genuinely original feel to the thriller genre, adding an unsettling psychological dimension which evokes Cold War paranoia whilst exploring personal obsession and insecurity.

The mood of La Sentinelle – rated as Desplechin’s best film to date – is relentlessly sombre and includes some stomach-churningly macabre dissection sequences; it is certainly not a film for the squeamish.  Much of the film’s power lies in its unusual narrative style and creepily voyeuristic photography, but it also owes a lot to Emmanuel Salinger’s darkly introspective performance.   Each of these elements so naturally evokes the works of Dostoeivski and Kafka, particularly in their portrayal of one man’s withdrawal from the world around him and his descent into manic obsession.

The film is as much a portrait of contemporary student life – albeit in a rather elitist circle – as it is a conspiracy thriller.  Indeed, one of the reasons why the film has such an impact is because it switches seamlessly from the world of the familiar to the world of the distinctly unfamiliar, occasionally catching us off guard and shocking us with images which appear, at first glance, surreal, until they assume a frightening reality.

The pacing is typical of French cinema – languorous and unhurried – yet it manages to hold our attention; a potential spectator should not be put off by its long runtime (the film is about thirty percent longer than the average American thriller).  The film is also far more character-oriented than most thrillers, and for much of the film there doesn’t seem to be much of a plot to speak of.  The drama is skilfully held in check and the tension isn’t released until the last few minutes when, in true thriller fashion, all the plot’s many story strands suddenly coalesce with an almighty ‘thud’ and everything is resolved.  Or is it…?  There’s a beautiful ambiguity about the film’s ending which leaves a chilling aftertaste, of the kind you only really get when reading a particularly good spy novel.

La Sentinelle was nominated for (but failed to get) the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1992 and also received nominations for three Césars in 1993.  Whilst the film failed to win Césars for the Best Original Script and Best First Work, it did win the Most Promising Young Actor award for Emmanuel Salinger.  Arnaud Desplechin reassembled much of the cast of this film for his subsequent work, Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle) , released in 1996.

© James Travers 2005

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