Lemming
2005 Drama / Thriller / Comedy / Fantasy
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Credits
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Summary
Alain Getty is a young robotics engineer whose latest invention, the Flying Webcam, delights
his boss, Richard Pollock. One evening, Alain invites Pollock and his wife, Alice,
to dine at his home with his wife Bénédicte. Alice spoils the evening
by revealing her husband’s infidelity. Later, Alain is working late in his laboratory
when Alice appears and tries to seduce him, unsuccessfully. Then, whilst Pollock
is away on business, Alice returns to the Getty household and ends up killing herself.
Alain suddenly notices a change in Bénédicte, as though she has become another
woman. And what began this strange series of events? – A half-dead lemming blocking
up the Gettys’ kitchen sink…
Review
Director Dominik Moll followed his hugely successful
Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (2000)
with a film that is even more weird and unpredictable, Lemming
- his third and strangest film to date. Part thriller, part social satire,
part ghost story, the film shows how the ordered world of a seemingly well-balanced
control-freak is set in turmoil through a series of increasingly bizarre events, which
ultimately lead him, and us, the audience, to find it hard to distinguish fantasy from
reality.
Moll pays homage to Hitchcock on numerous occasions, and the thriller elements of the film have a distinctly Hitchcockian feel, but it is equally a darkly subversive assault on the bourgeois classes, carrying some echoes of Chabrol and Buñuel in its mocking portrayal of the complacency and moral vacuity of the comfortable middle classes. More than anything, though, it is a black comedy of the blackest and cleverest kind. Moll’s genius is his ability to give a delicious comic veneer to a scene that should be deadly serious or shockingly horrific, without really diminishing the scene’s dramatic impact. Most directors clearly delineate between drama and comedy; Moll manages to show us both at the same time, in the same space, and this can be quite an unsettling experience. The problem with this film is that the plot feels uncomfortably contrived, the characters too caricatured, with the result that it doesn’t quite add up to anything substantial. The film’s high production values (which include some amazing CGI special effects) are let down by a script which fails to make its characters convincing and seems to flitter haphazardly between the banal and the supernatural without any rationale. That the film works as well as it does is down largely to the excellent contributions from its four leading actors, who each seems to have a worryingly acute appreciation of the twisted world in which Dominik Moll lives. Charlotte Rampling is simultaneously tragic, disturbing and hauntingly sensual as the dangerously psychotic Alice, and very nearly steals the film. As the narrative focus, Laurent Lucas could hardly be surpassed, and he brings a gripping intensity to his darkly introspective portrayal of a man whose dogged determination to stay in control drives him to the edge of sanity (with hilarious consequences). Whilst you feel that Moll could have done better (particularly in the script department), it would grossly unfair to say that this film is a disappointment. Lemming may not be perfect, it may be a little too self-conscious and over-directed, but it is a pleasure to watch - seductively stylish, intellectually engaging and irresistibly funny. © James Travers 2007 Write a review for this film... |
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