Regarde la mer

A woman living with her small child at a remote coastal location allows a vagabond woman to stay with her for a couple of days. This is a curiosity piece. While it is somewhat interesting, it is not clear why Ozon even bothered with this one. At 52 minutes, it is too long for a short film and too short for a feature film. Despite its short length, it drags a bit. It is basically a bizarre collection of scenes that don't add up to much of anything. There's no rhyme or reason to the things the women do except that both display odd behavior that is left unexplained. The only point of the whole exercise seems to be to justify the end, which is disturbing but not surprising.

See The Sea is one of those films that's truly horrifying. This is one

of the few movies that gave me a true scare, not a cheap one. A mother

and her child live in a cottage that's located by the sea. Her husband

is always on a lengthy business trip, leaving the two alone for long

periods of time. One day, a female drifter comes into their lives. This

is when the fun begins. Mere words cannot describe what happens next.

But the end results are down right scary. If you want a nice scare or

if you enjoy a real good thriller every now and then, this one might be

your cup of tea.

Highly recommended.

A-

The film is directed by the controversial François Ozon. See the Sea is also his first long feature, as that said; the film isn't very long, only 52 minutes.

See the sea is very short and very powerful, but it's also very minimal. Like, there are only three characters in the film, and only two of them can talk, and they barley do. And there is no music or sound effects, everything is quiet, and it's stylistic photographed. It kind reminds me of Roman Polanskis masterful film Knife in the Water.

See the sea is a good and very rarely film, but where the film totally failed is the "shocking end", because it isn't shocking, I saw the ending just after five minutes.. So the surprise effect is totally gone, and that ruin the film a lot. But still worth watching.

Ever since I've started writing comments on IMDb I've been writing about European movies more than about American, and I've suggested readers to watch most of them. I gave good marks to French movies, though many others (mostly American) movie-lovers found them pretentious, false artistic or boring. But now here's the movie that expresses everything bad people have ever thought about French movies. Too short for a serious standard movie, too long for its weak story. Too much nudity for prudes, too little to be a soft-porn. Too many unimportant scenes, too little developing of characters. If Americans often make cover versions of French movies, this one shamelessly steels from US movies and still succeeds to make it boring, because we can expect in advance every important event and the revealing of secrets doesn't surprise us very much. Finally, the "shocking" end of the movie is in fact the only logical one.

What's good in the movie? Photography maybe, but it is so common in French movies that it's not necessary to emphasize it (no better, no worse than average French photo). The acting is also far below French standards. Paul as character might have also been omitted from the movie, he might have been left just as a person somewhere far away: it would have been intriguing for us to think if he existed at all. But it would be too, too much for writers to understand that.

This is a good shocker, using something of a Wuthering Heights scenario in miniature. It would have made an excellent 30-35 minute short, but was unnecessarily extended for probably commercial reasons. If some scenes appear to add little to the story, try to think about the link between:

-What Tatiana says about the consequencies of women ripping during childbirth

-Tatiana's disturbed personality

-the toothbrush incident

-Tatiana's knowledge of the men in the forest, yet lack of interest in joining Sasha for oral sex there

-The closing scene

The director nicely sets up the atmosphere of foreboding, which after all, is what horror movies depend on. I though the rope on the victim was a clever and disturbing touch; it's something I've never seen before, although I admittedly haven't seen many horror flicks. While you can guess how it ends fairly early on, the twists and turns in getting there, and the denouement, are quite unexpected. Compared with Ozon's other shorts, this has some substance mixed in with his usual puerile, tedious obsession with the dark side of human sexuality.

I like films like this (e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey)where you have to think afterwards about what you've seen, and maybe see it again, to make complete sense of it. Your mileage may vary.