Film Review
At the start of his career, French director Damien Odoul distinguished
himself with his rural drama
Le Souffle (2001), a film
defined by some stark imagery and an oddly disconcerting poetic sense
of the unreality of life. These unsettling characteristics are to
be found in his latest feature
La
Peur, a vivid depiction of the brutality of the First World War
and its impact on those who survived the nightmare of this industrial
scale carnage. The film received the Prix Jean-Vigo in 2015, an
award usually reserved for young filmmakers showing exceptional
stylistic originality, but it garnered decidedly mixed reviews on its
first release in France and fails to have as much impact as other
recent French films on WWI - notably Christian Carion's unashamedly
sentimental
Joyeux Noël (2005) and
Gabriel Le Bomin's grimly harrowing
Les Fragments d'Antonin (2006).
Like Le Bomin, Odoul attempts to show us the immense psychological
impact of the war on those who participated in it, but does so far less
successfully and appears to be more concerned with the horrific
spectacle of the conflict than in its human consequences. Loosely
based on Gabriel Chevallier's autobiographical novel of the same title,
first published in 1930, the film offers a succession of startling
tableaux which, whilst mostly impressive in their own right, don't
quite add up to a coherent or satisfying narrative. Most potent
are the battle scenes, apocalyptic in their scale and terrifying
brutality, although a few of these are marred by mediocre CGI effects
which diminish the realism somewhat. It is the images showing us
the grim after-effects of the fercious ammunition exchanges (eerily
lifeless wastelands strewn with eviscerated animals and mangled
corpses) that are more likely to stay in the mind of the spectator and
are more expressive of the futility of war.
It was Odoul's striving for authenticity that led him to cast
predominantly non-professionals for his film. The principal role
went to first-timer Nino Rocher, and Patrick de Valette, who plays
Ferdinand, one of the more fully fledged characters, is a clown by
profession. There is certainly a freshness and spontaneity to the
performances, but the lack of acting experience shows in the more
intimate scenes, which fail to engage at more than a superficial
level. This is the central weakness of
La Peur - the cold detachment that
Odoul shows in his mise-en-scène, coupled with some
over-emphatic dialogue and mostly bland acting, makes the film feel
distant and unengaging throughout. Odoul is happy to shock us,
but he seems curiously unwilling to engage our sympathies.
A more obvious failing is the central protagonist's monotonous voiceover which,
self-conscious and laden with clichés, conveys no
real sense of the terrible ordeal that has been lived through.
Odoul's misreading of history is also of some concern. Throughout
the film, he constantly stresses the innocence of the young squaddies
('poilus' as they are known in France), practically characterising them
as lambs led to the slaughter. In actual fact, most were willing
volunteers caught up in the wave of nationalistic fervour which
is accurately depicted at the start of the film
(this is certainly true in the early years of the war, which is where the film is
supposedly situated).
La
Peur is a film that effectively evokes the senseless barbarism
of WWI through Odoul's distinctively bleak poetry, but its crude
simplifications, the absence of any personal identification with the
subject matter and a paucity of genuine human feeling all prevent it
from leaving much of a lasting impression.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Damien Odoul film:
Le Souffle (2001)
Film Synopsis
The First World War has barely started when Gabriel, a young French
conscript, is sent to the Front in 1914. Here, amidst the bombs,
the bullets and the endless mud, he will have more than his share of
the horror of trench warfare, but his greatest enemy is the fear he
must learn to tame in order to do his duty and stay alive.
Emerging from this ghastly adventure which has left him badly shaken
and burning with anger, Gabriel must find a way to rebuild his
shattered life and regain his humanity...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.