La mécanique de l'ombre

A modest film becomes a "great film" in your mind, when you have been avoiding the usual offer for weeks: Los Angeles movies, re-boom of Korean cinema, the Spanish dose, the monthly fee of Latin American pictures, and suddenly something without haste appears, surrounds you, interests you, likes you and leads you to a placid conclusion. Nothing extraordinary happened, but you had a real good time.

Made in 2016, «The Mechanics of Shadows» had that effect on me; it was a relief, after I could not resist more than 10 minutes of «What Happened to Monday», a Netflix science fiction movie whose biggest hook was to put the same actress playing seven sisters. But when the old face of Cluzet appeared, like the civil servant who loses his job, goes to meetings Alcoholics Anonymous reunions, where he meets Alba Rohrwacher, and the soundtrack was not in English and there was no hip-hop, I risked saying to myself, "This I'm going to enjoy". And yes, I did.

Francois Cluzet, an actor who has been in cinema longer than it seems, suddenly receives a job offer: all he has to do is transcribe recordings made by a security agency , which supposedly defends the security of "la France", and turns out to be a Parallax Corporation-style assassin agency, but without the ostentation of original (in American film «The Parallax View»). It is a pyramid of hidden power, where agents, ruffians and murderers are inserted in the whole social fiber, and from which Cluzet tries to get out, ah, but he does not know what he got into ... and how difficult it is going to cost him to get out. The film is a bit Hitchcockian, with its innocent man, the mousey man, the ordinary gray man who, suddenly, has to release himself from all the death sentences that are accumulating on his back. It is a French "thriller", which means, a little of real time, a few shadows, no hasty and tricky editing, no futile shocks (to say that "something happens") or pretty faces to decorate the cake. And it does not care if you foresee the outcome.

This cinema is as necessary as art cinema, social cinema, junk from L.A. and the pretentious and presumptuous auteur cinema. It is efficient entertainment, made with skill and in a down to earth tone, even if it is telling you a convoluted story, with the right dose of tension, so that later "relaxation" has a better effect.

This film has also been released with the English language title THE EAVESDROPPER. Its original French title is LA MÉCANIQUE DE L'OMBRE. It is set in Paris and the central performance by Francois Cluzet is absolutely perfect. As for the direction by Thomas Kruithof, who also co-wrote the original screenplay, it is a master class model of how to make a thriller which never loses its pace for a second. But this is not one of those thrillers with car chases and gun battles. It is primarily a surgical examination of MENACE, and it has a profound psychological element to it. Cluzet plays a man who becomes involved in a mysterious surveillance project. His job is to listen to taped phone conversations and type them out on a typewriter, as computers are not considered safe. He sits alone in a bare flat doing this and becomes increasingly alarmed at what he hears. One day he hears a murder take place. He is a man of few words and few friends. He can tell no one. He goes on with his work. He notices articles in the newspapers about the people whose conversations he overhears. There are hostages being held by terrorists, and someone is delaying their release. Politics is involved, but who is doing it? Some of the conversations recorded are those of security chiefs. The level of security access suggested by this mysterious operation is very high. Cluzet tries to quit, but is prevented from doing so by threats. He becomes compromised in a murder. Things get worse and worse, and then they get still worse. The director is clever at building the tension, and the musical track aids this superbly. The settings and the direction itself are what could be called 'minimalist'. This is highly effective. It is easier to be scared when things are bare and there are no visible clues. What transpires, who is behind it all, and whether Cluzet will survive, are all things which the reviewer's code prevents me from revealing.

A film with an intriguing first half hour and set-up, a 70s-style spy thriller with mysterious shadow figures, typewriters and cassette recordings, that loses its way as it dives down into an incomprehensible labyrinthine political head-scratcher.

The muted, stripped down palette and sets and the very intentional non-digital central setup of an accountant transcribing cassette taps does remind of past films like The Conversation.

As it moves on however the initial setup does largely seem like a gimmick to have a base to move off from.

The main reason to keep watching for me is the always-engaging Cluzet. Often called upon to play the 'everyman' in his films (e.g. Tell No One), here he plays Duval very downtrodden - unhappy with his working life, attending AA meetings and living a seemingly very solitary, structured life. And yet when he's embroiled into criminality, he's always believable. He struggles, a fish out of water, usually to be beaten back and really gave me my only reason to keep watching: I wanted to see what would happen to Duval.

A pity given the main parlour games between shadow operatives seeking for 'the notebooks' had lost my interest well before the 87mins were done but there's also nothing especially off-putting going on either.

A French thriller; A story about an unemployed man who is hired by a mysterious organization to transcribe intercepted calls. This shadowy spy story has a theme about one who places trust in those who don't trust others. It places the viewer in predicaments about telling the truth when there is risk and how it feels to be trapped with seemingly no way out. The film mounts tension well in the first act by producing intrigue and paranoia from a minimalist style of direction. But, it fails to sustain the tension beyond the introduction of a plot change and a plot convolution thereafter. There are are some implausible details like use of an old fashioned typewriter in a modern setting and the easy trust of a strange, anonymous employer, unvetted. By the end the story weighs heavy and lacking substance but the journey there is made easy by a very watchable lead performance and brilliant sound design.

Scribe or ' La mécanique de l'ombre' is a Film starring Francois Cluzet ('Untouchable') as an accountant who loses his job after a bit of a meltdown. He takes two years to get his life back on track and then receives a telephone call one night offering him a job.

Well he hardly has anything better to do so he accepts despite there being some very strict rules – but all he has to do really is type out transcripts of telephone conversations. What at first seems like an easy gig soon takes on a much darker hue when he realises what is being revealed in the tapped phone calls.

Now this is really well made and the acting is superb. The plot is original up to a point and the direction and cinematography are professional and I really liked it as a film. However, it suffers from the thriller disease in that it has to have a few twists and a climactic end etc. I sort of spotted them all - except one and so for me it did tread a path that appeared a tad well worn. Despite that it is still a film with much to applaud hence my rating.