Quelque chose d'organique (1998)
Directed by Bertrand Bonello

Film Review

Bertrand Bonello makes an impressive directoral debut with this perceptive and poignant study of a young married couple drifting apart. Quelque chose d'organique does exhibit some of the failings we might expect from a first film (uneven pacing, a slight tendency to over-egg the pudding), but these are amply made up for by the sincerity with which it deals with familiar domestic themes. It may lack the daring of Bonello's subsequent Le Pornographe (2001) and Tiresia (2003), but it is hard not to be seduced by the film's raw intimacy and authenticity.

The film benefits from the intensely involving performances from its lead actors, Romane Bohringer and Laurent Lucas.  The calibre of the acting, coupled with unhurried pace of the film, allows the audience to get under the skin of the two main characters, and this can only serve to heighten the film's tragic poignancy.

The film's uneven pacing does present something of a challenge for the spectator, however. The long silent breaks in the narrative slow things down to a crawl and risk diminishing the spectator's involvement. This is particularly noticeable in the latter part of the film, where the paucity of coherent dialogue makes Marguerite's behaviour both perplexing and unbelievable.

Some directorial decisions tend to further alienate the audience by needlessly muddling the narrative. For example, the film begins with two wildly contrasting scenes, one with Paul passionately kissing his wife, the other with him having killed her.  Bonello leaves it to the spectator to make sense of what then ensues, which presumably is an extended flashback of what takes place between these two scenes. Sometimes a non-linear narrative can turn a mediocre film into a really interesting film, but here it seems like a gratuitous self-indulgence that takes away more than it adds. Overall, though, it's an impressive directorial debut - Bonello is clearly a director who is going places.

Film Synopsis

Paul lives with his young wife Marguerite and his father, an illegal Greek immigrant, in Montreal.  He works as a zoo keeper and occupies himself with his infant son from an earlier marriage, who is seriously ill in hospital.  One day, after five years of contented married life, Paul realises that his marriage is falling apart.  Marguerite has started to lead a secret life which leads her further and further from her husband...