Film Review
In the 1980s, Charlotte Silvera enjoyed some success as a debutant
filmmaker with her humane dramas
Louise... l'insoumise (1985),
and
Prisonnières
(1988). Her 1997 film
C'est la tangente que je
préfère was an engaging coming-of-age drama
that made the unlikely equation between maths and love. Lately,
however, Silvera's film work has shown a dramatic leap to the lower
depths of mediocrity, and her justly reviled
Les Filles, personne s'en méfie
(2002) was followed by something even less tolerable:
Escalade. Cinema
doesn't get much worse than this, it really doesn't..
Escalade is a film that starts
from a reasonable premise but quickly collapses under the weight of the
ineptitude that is thrown at it, from just about every direction.
Take one totally implausible situation, a collection of instantly
unlikeable characters played by a group of individuals with no obvious
acting ability, direct with a minimum of restraint and the result can
only be a Grade A disaster. Even Carmen Maura, an actress of
considerable repute, cannot resist going insanely O.T.T. with the rest,
turning in the worst performance of her career (and who can blame her,
given the quality of the script that has been foisted on her).
Escalade is such an unmitigated
mess of a film that it is an agony to sit through even half of it.
To call it amateurish would be understating matters by a factor of ten.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Equipped with a bouquet of flowers and a set of disarming smiles, four
high school students pay a private call on their headmistress, Alice
Nabat, to wish her a happy birthday. Moved by this kind gesture,
Alice invites the teenagers in for a drink, completely unaware of what
she is letting herself in for. Behind the nice smiles there are
dark and sinister thoughts. Alice's guests intend to give her an
education of an altogether different kind from the one she is used
to...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.