L'engagement 1.0

'(Little) Red Riding Hood' all over the world, including Spain, last year, filmmaker Stephane Guenin has presented his feature film 'L'Engagement 1.0' in Paris, where suspense and espionage come together with highly topical political issues. He is currently on a French tour, before making the leap to other European countries.

The film tells the story of a lawyer who is detained by the French secret services with the aim of revealing his relationship with a terrorist group. Through flashbacks and intense interrogation, the viewer must discover what each of the characters is hiding before reaching a violent final confrontation.

Guenin , a lawyer by profession before making the leap to film, explains that "the idea for the story came to mind when he was completing his doctorate in law, in collaboration with the CTU units ( Counter Terrorism French Units , in 1994". He first wrote a script in 2005, which was a "big-budget" film, so in October 2012 he developed "a prequel with a much smaller budget." In January 2013 he made the decision to focus on this second project since, as he explains, "it was time to move forward in the story" to prevent it from continuing in a drawer and the best way to do it was this prequel inspired by real events. That he knew from his training. In this way, he reduced filming times and focused the main scenes on 11 days, which were not easy to carry out since the temperature reached -15ºC.

Guenin as producer is responsible for EuroPacific Films, the main production company that finances 'L'Engagement 1.0'. Although he is not alone in this task, since it is an international co-production between the United States, France, Hungary and India. The team carried out a thorough search for locations and managed to film in the Madeleine church (Paris), becoming the first film to be shot there.

The Assignment 1.0 is a fine illustration of the "new terrorism", far from the clichés seen 100 times over. Here, we are shown white-collar terrorism. The film shows us the new recruitment methods used to create intermediaries who make terrorist acts possible, particularly in France. As a former attorney at law, I witnessed some of what the film shows us with great accuracy and authenticity. The actors are little-known or unknown, so it's easier to get into the story. I really enjoyed this behind-closed-doors film. It meinds me the way that I have been passionated by another much older movie "Garde à vue" by Claude Miller.

The movie does rather well for the first twenty minutes, then firmly abandons credibility/logic territory. From then on, it's downhill all the way. Happenings become more and more absurd, and characters morph in strange ways: for instance, a mild mannered attorney is revealed as an expert torturer and killer. On top of this the film propagates the fashionable meme Palestinian resistance = terrorism.

There is some good acting but also plenty of the over-the-top variety. The more chilling moment is at the end, where a situation between two characters is left unresolved. Will there be The Assignment 2.0? I sincerely hope not.