Le Créateur (1999) - film review

After the success of his first play, writer Darius ends up in a hospital to cure him of his alcoholism.  When he returns to Paris six months later, his producer immediately demands his next play, which is about to go into rehearsal.  Unable to write, totally depressed, and have killed his neighbour’s cat by accident, Darius takes an overdose of sleeping tablets.  When he wakes up, he finds that the first act of his play has been written on his computer.  Convinced that the act of killing has given him the inspiration he needs, he embarks on a career of murder and mayhem...

Le Créateur, Albert Dupontel’s second full-length film, is a twisted, unsettling mélange of black comedy and surrealist fantasy, which offers an unusual perspective on the problem of writer’s block.  The film’s most striking feature is its strong visual style, reminiscent of the dark fairytale approach of Jeunet and Caro’s Delicatessen , combined with the manic comic violence of Benoît Poelvoorde’s C’est arrivé près de chez vous.

The extreme visual images and distorted photography, in which reality is merged with fantasy, transports  the spectator into the increasingly nightmarish world of a writer who has apparently lost the ability to write.  Admittedly, the film does tend to get tangled up in its excesses in one or two places (the carnage at the Breton crêperie is hilarious but sends the film way over the top.  Yet, to its credit, it is a hugely imaginative work which is excruciatingly funny in places.  However, the film is most effective when it is least spectacular, in its quite moments of introspection.  For example, the scene where Darius is staring lovingly at his own reflection when he discovers he has written the first part of his play brilliantly captures the schizophrenic nature of an artist’s inner-life, as well as the insecurity, loneliness and narcissism.

For the most part, the film is more preoccupied with shocking its audience than telling a poignant story, and this undermines the film’s inherent strengths, rendering it less watchable and potentially alienating its audience.  Nevertheless, this is certainly a film that is worth seeing, mainly for the extraordinary dream sequence in which ex-Python Terry Jones appears in his cameo part as God, himself the victim of writer’s block.

© James Travers 2002

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?