Viewing Claude Chabrol's interesting 1991 adaptation of Madame Bovary earlier this month,I found myself struggling to track down other enticing French films from the year. Reading the review pages of fellow IMDber dbdumonteil,I was excited to find praise for a rather obscure French Sci-Fi title from '91,which led to me finding out how mere this mortal is.
View on the film:
Looking back towards The Twilight Zone, the screenplay by writer/ director Pierre Jolivet cleverly plays on the paranoid Sci-Fi ambiguity, by making Stéphane appear to be the only one to hear "messages" from the aliens. Holding Stéphane to follow the demands of the alien messages,Jolivet curls the Sci-Fi into a jet-black Thriller ball of Rube Goldberg-style "accidents" that push Stéphane closer to losing his marbles. Making the "accidents" work like clockwork,Jolivet & cinematographer Bertrand Chatry stylishly use the edge of frame/the screen for fatal events to occur, and give the tale a playful line in humour by having the alien messages get played from unplugged objects. Trying to hold it together,Philippe Volter gives a gripping performance as Stéphane,who Volter covers with sweat over the accidents that he causes and being unable to escape the demands that the aliens place on a mere mortal.
View on the film:
Looking back towards The Twilight Zone, the screenplay by writer/ director Pierre Jolivet cleverly plays on the paranoid Sci-Fi ambiguity, by making Stéphane appear to be the only one to hear "messages" from the aliens. Holding Stéphane to follow the demands of the alien messages,Jolivet curls the Sci-Fi into a jet-black Thriller ball of Rube Goldberg-style "accidents" that push Stéphane closer to losing his marbles. Making the "accidents" work like clockwork,Jolivet & cinematographer Bertrand Chatry stylishly use the edge of frame/the screen for fatal events to occur, and give the tale a playful line in humour by having the alien messages get played from unplugged objects. Trying to hold it together,Philippe Volter gives a gripping performance as Stéphane,who Volter covers with sweat over the accidents that he causes and being unable to escape the demands that the aliens place on a mere mortal.