Film Review
After cutting his teeth on a dozen or so documentaries and shorts, Blaise
Harrison makes his feature debut proper with
Les Particules, a cinematic
oddity that brings a startlingly fresh perspective to the somewhat over-mined
teen movie concept. The film is set on the director's home turf of
the Pays de Gex in northeastern France, which is where the world's largest
particle accelerator - the Large Hadron Collider - is sited, a hundred metres
below ground.
You'd have thought that Harrison would have gone to town with the idea of
scientists mucking about with the fundamental forces of nature, unleashing
untold mayhem on the fabric of reality as they fire bits of matter and antimatter
at each other. But no, the connection between atom smashing and a teenager's
existential angst proves to be a tenuous one - although no doubt it will
inspire some Hollywood executive to run with the idea and make it the subject
of yet another blockbuster disaster epic in a year or two.
A decent sci-fi premise may have gone by the wayside, but this is probably
no bad thing. What Harrison delivers is a far more intriguing and innovative
work. It is more
cinéma vérité than genre
offering, anchored in the kind of raw social realism that the respected Dardenne
brothers have made their trademark. At the beginning,
Les Particules
has more in common with a fly-on-the-wall documentary than a fictional drama,
introducing a rebellious teenager P.A. who loves doing all the things that
boys of his age get up to - making life hell for his teachers at school and
hanging about with his equally wild classmates. Drugs, loud music and
cruelty to girls are just three of the key elements of his existence.
But, gradually, this seeming normality starts to break up as P.A. begins
nurturing a growing unease with the world around him. Like a character
in a Philip K. Dick novel (e.g.
Time Out of Joint), the adolescent
senses that not everything is as it seems and that beneath the surface reality
of his everyday perceptions there is another reality trying to break through.
Is he imagining things? Has he eaten too many magic mushrooms?
Or is reality as he knows it genuinely falling apart, with portals to parallel
worlds suddenly becoming apparent to him? As P.A.'s anxieties increase,
so the film becomes increasingly weird, with unusual camera set-ups, image
treatment and the eeriest soundtrack imaginable all being employed to reflect
the growing disorientation of its main protagonist.
Harrison's experience as a documentary filmmaker shows both in the striking
naturalism of the film in its saner passages and his decision to employ exclusively
non-professional actors. Thomas Daloz was a lucky find, and in the
role of P.A. he gives a portrait of adolescent alienation that is both fascinating
and intensely disturbing. Like his fellow actors, Daloz appears to
typify a generation of youngsters that seem to have become disconnected from
the world, partly by technology (following the iPhone revolution), but also
through a deep-seated anxiety about what the future holds for them, an anxiety
that they struggle to articulate in a meaningful way.
Les Particules touches on the existential threat posed by scientists'
unbridled quest for knowledge (some have already speculated that machines
like the LHC might one day create a black hole that could swallow up the
entire planet), but what it conveys most convincingly is the understandable
alienation of a generation that is beginning to wake up to the terrifying
future that mankind now faces as the world begins to hit back after a century
of relentless plunder and desecration. As one reality fades from view
- the insane delusion that we inhabit a world of infinite resources - so
another reality emerges to take its place, one with doom etched on every
quark.
© James Travers 2019
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
In the Pays de Gex, a region of France on the border with Switzerland, Pierre-André
(who prefers to be known as P.A.) is in his last year at school. 100
metres beneath his feet is the world's largest particle accelerator, the
LHC, which an international team of scientists are using to recreate the
conditions of the Big Bang to better understand the physical composition
of the universe. With the onset of winter, P.A. begins noticing some
bizarre changes in the world around him. Is he imagining things or
can it be that reality is somehow being reshaped by the experimenters at
CERN? His worst fears appear to be confirmed when his best friend Mérou
suddenly goes missing during a school outing...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.