This was a very interesting film for about an hour, and then an uninteresting film for about half an hour, and then an embarrassing film for the final 5 minutes. I don’t like melodrama, and I do not like characters who show that they are angry by screaming, especailly if they aren’t screaming words, but just AHH!!! over and over again (see: the ending of The Mist (2007)).
The film starts off very well though. The opening scene genuinely unnerved me. Old people standing in a field at night staring into a light and crying is unnerving for me. People are introduced into unappealing situations and seem completely out of it, and not knowing the cause was much more interesting to me than when I spent more time with the characters and found that there was nothing so interesting about what was happening. There is a scene towards the end that tried to disturb me again, with a filter that inverted the scene and had people moving like wild animals. I get that as a theme for Grandieux, but this particular scene came across as a bit too art school video filter to me for it to genuinely creep me out. The many sex scenes are consistently dire.
Low lighting in nearly every scene made me feel very dirty. I felt like I was stuck in a nasty underworld of crime, prostitution, terror, and torture that most reminds me of how I felt while watching Irreversible (Noé, 2002). This was my first Grandrieux film, I have read that his Sombre (1998) and newest Un Lac are better films than this one, so I am definitely going to try and see them as soon as I can.