Qui a tué Bambi? (2003) - film review

Isabelle is training to be a nurse in a modern French hospital.  When she faints in the presence of an attractive young doctor, Philipp, the latter gives her the nickname “Bambi”.  Thereafter, Isabelle becomes increasingly fascinated yet frightened by Dr Philipp.  When she learns that an anaesthetic drug is being diluted, she suspects Philipp is responsible.  When she finally obtains clinching proof of his guilt, she suddenly realises that her life is in danger...

Gilles Marchand had made his mark on French cinema as a screenwriter – scripting such diverse films as the bleak social drama Ressources humaines (1999) and the popular black comedy Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (2000) – before making his directorial debut with Qui a tué Bambi?  A tame psycho-sexual thriller which clearly owes much to Hitchcock, the film plays on our darkest neuroses about hospitals and men in white coats to great effect but ultimately fails to satisfy our need for a coherent storyline and characters we can identify with.  Plus, the title makes no sense and looks as if it was dreamed up by the publicity department on a very bad day.

Don’t be surprised when a sense of dejà-vu starts to roll over you when you watch this film.  It is hard to know which contains the greater abundance of clichés – the mise-en-scène or the plot.  Essentially, the film is little more than a pretty-girl-in-peril psycho-thriller of the kind that was done to death (and then some) in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and Marchand’s unadventurous direction does little to reinvigorate the dated genre.  The slick cinematography has far greater merit – its chilling dream-like quality adds substance to a threadbare plot and goes some way to blurring the edges between reality and fantasy, although this is pretty well undermined by a script that seems to be in too much of a hurry to give away the game.

One of film’s weaknesses is that it departs too often from the first person perspective.  The psycho-thriller only works well if the story is told from the perspective of the victim.  Imagine just how effective the famous shower scene in Psycho would have been if we saw Norman Bates slipping into his mother’s togs before he went off to slice up Janet Leigh.  In Qui a tué Bambi?, Dr Philipp’s deadly perversions are presented as real far too early in the story.  Consider how much more suspenseful the film would have been if we never quite knew whether Philipp was a genuine threat or an imaginary one.

The film’s main (perhaps only) redeeming feature are the gripping performances from the lead actors Sophie Quinton and Laurent Lucas.  The latter has practically cornered the market when it comes to playing sinister young professional types, but here he is so relentlessly creepy that once you have seen the film you just know he will be popping up in your next few nightmares, his eyes shining with malignant glee.  Laurent Lucas is the Jack Nicholson of French cinema, equipped with a smile which can genuinely freeze the blood.  Yes, the central characters in the story are absurd stereotypes, but Quinton and Lucas rise well above the mediocrity of the script, make the characters convicing and keep us well and truly hooked, no matter how silly the story gets.  Well, almost...

© James Travers 2005

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?