Lemming

I loved Dominik Moll's 2011 dark drama 'The monk,' with Vincent Cassel, though I didn't realize he had also made this before I sat to watch. It was the involvement of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Charlotte Rampling that particularly caught my eye. Yet as the picture first begins what's most noteworthy is the extraordinarily abnormal tone that it adopts. Especially with a near total absence of music to start, or the most blithe and light of music to tickle our ears; Jean-Marc Fabre's bare-faced cinematography, and an incidental frame rate that gives the title the appearance of live television; and the subdued scenes of domesticity that greet us from the get-go? Frankly 'Lemming' looks and feels like a soap opera - albeit one with special effects, and peculiarities readily dancing on the edges of the narrative. Almost three-quarters of an hour have elapsed in the runtime before a spike of vibrancy is thrust in our face to alter that perception, but still the writing of the characters, dialogue, and scenes pointedly reinforce that atypical, off-kilter sensibility of a small screen melodrama. None of this is inherently a reflection of the quality of the feature, but the curiosities about the craftsmanship mount as surely as those in the story. I'll say this much, Moll keeps us watching if for no other reason than that we want to get a beat from every angle on what it is he's doing here.

While I'm not specifically familiar with others in the cast, including André Dussollier and Laurent Lucas, I'm definitely a fan of Gainsbourg and Rampling and I know what they're capable of. Such as 'Lemming' is I think everyone gives a splendid performance of nuance and unmistakable personality, not to mention underhanded, growing feelings of disquiet. At the same time, odd as the movie is by way of Moll and Gilles Marchand's screenplay, Moll's direction, and the atypical airs to which so many facets contribute (even sound effects), what somewhat comes across is that there's little firm anchor point for the actors to grasp at. The acting is solid, but not remarkable, and to be honest, kind of indescribable. Meanwhile, it's not until the picture is already almost half over before the strange soap opera sentiments slightly recede, and a discrete atmosphere of offbeat psychological drama rises in the mix. As it does David Whitaker's score gradually becomes more present, and more tensely haunting along the way, reaching a dazzling peak in the last stretch; the film at large becomes more actively engaging and engrossing on its own merits, and altogether thriling in some capacity. And still those same quaint fixings persist. No matter what other labels one wishes to append to this title, it mostly feels very different from other movies that I've seen.

For all that, though: it's also really good! Unusual as this looks and feels, it's well made. I admire the writing, the direction, and the acting, all toying with substantial uncertainties and even weaving them into the fundamental construction. Sound, cinematography, editing, production design and art direction, lovely filming locations - all around 'Lemming' is shaped with skill, intelligence, and care. The story is compelling and enjoyable, not least with the striking turns that it takes from beginning to end. Yet even with all the weird places that psychological dramas or thrillers often go, I wonder if this isn't one of the more distinctly kooky ones given the tenor that it adopts for such a considerable portion of its length, and in so many ways. I don't even think there's any emphatic flaw or shortcoming here, and I rather want to like the movie more than I do. I'm just not 100% sure what to make of it; while the more whimsical facets here are well done and entertaining for what they are (in the first half above all), they are a tad distracting. There's no singular stroke of brilliance, and I'm unsure who I'd even recommend it to. I do very much like 'Lemming,' but mark it as a picture best suited for those open to all the wide possibilities of cinema, and fare that's a bit off the beaten track. If that sounds like you, then just kick back, relax, and enjoy the wackiness.

I've recently been going through a couple of French films that lean heavily on the suspense. The French know their business. They make dozens of these every year. One might label them simply as thrillers. Some recent ones; this one, Haneke's CACHÉ (2005) (half-Austrian, all right), THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (2005) together with Chabrol's - mostly late '60s - work. This dream-like suspense-yarn compares rather unfavourably to the other films mentioned. This is mostly due to the rather ridiculous subtext of the titular Lemming (the framework is built around the mysterious appearance of a dead lemming in the kitchen sink of a young couple). Furthermore, Charlotte Rampling's character behaves in such an abnormal way, it becomes too much to swallow. In a dream sequence, thousand of lemmings appear in the home of Alain Getty, the central character. But his wife, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, has an almost equally important part. Perhaps I misread the whole thing and this was all a highly associative nightmare sprung from the main characters' minds. In that case, not a very pleasant one. It's quite suspenseful up to a point, but after a while the characters begin to behave in such an irrational (and stupid) fashion, it becomes very tedious. I just wanna know what happened to the lemming?

Camera Obscura --- 5/10

Lemming starts promisingly with the dinner party from hell. A young, much in love couple is preparing dinner for their guests, his boss and the boss' wife. Alain Getty (Laurent Lucas) is the newly hired home automation designer at The Pollack Company. He's smart, decent and good-looking. His wife, Benedicte, is alert, pretty and bright. She cooks. He tastes. They smooch. Then their guests show up. His boss, Richard Pollack (Andre Dussollier), is older, gracious and friendly. Alice Pollack (Charlotte Rampling), grim and puffy-eyed, is something else, from the sunglasses she wears at table to the glass of wine she throws in her husband's face. In between, the young couple hears her accusations of his infidelity. She trains her venom on the young wife as she leaves. On top of all this, the kitchen sink's drain is stopped up with what we later find is a lemming.

So far, so good.

But if we were expecting the clever, unnerving suspense of director Dominik Moll's With A Friend Like Harry from 2000, we're going to be not only disappointed but also surprised at Moll's miscues. The blame must be shared with his co-writer, Gilles Marchand. There simply are no motivations or situations that arise other than what, over and over, Moll and Marchand create out of thin air for us. That is, of course what the movies are all about. But with A Friend Like Harry, all we had to do was accept one unlikely situation...that there might be someone lurking about like Harry. Once we swallowed that hook, we were caught. With that accepted, everything else Moll threw at us was accepted, however unlikely or extreme. With Lemming, there's no first cause that makes sense or is believable. The hook we have to swallow is that Alain's hormone's will respond to the aging stimulus of Mrs. Pollack's unsmiling attempt at seduction, and that Alain's involuntary and momentary arousal makes him just as guilty as if he'd agreed to jump in the sack with her. Alain doesn't agree to do that, regardless of how a few hormones responded, because he honorably loves his wife. Moll needs a motivating cause for what he has in store for us. This isn't believable enough, but Moll doesn't seem to notice. He gives us a director's indulgence. Consequently, everything that follows is a director's indulgence, too.

The first 46 minutes of Lemming, even if not especially engaging, have a nice uneasiness about them, culminating in a genuinely unexpected action. From then on, however, I was never especially engaged in the creepy shenanigans of isolated cabins, dreams, waves of rodents, adultery, the Mini Flying Webcam, hints of the Exorcist, murder and even the origin of lemmus lemmus and how one got stuck in a drain in the south of France. All seemed to be manipulations of a director who, this time, might not have been as smart as he thought he was.

If Moll with his lemming wants to deal in metaphors, perhaps our metaphor should be the last thing we hear...Mama Cass and the rest of the Mamas and the Papas singing Dream a Little Dream of Me. It's a great song but we have it pasted a little pretentiously onto the end of a French psycho thriller. As hard as this is to say, Mama Cass doesn't exactly swing it.

I saw this film today and thought it was beautifully constructed with layers of metaphor and 'reality' that one can choose to attend to at will. I don't think the film was Hitchcockian - the pace was much more leisurely and atmospheric than most Hitchcock or American films. However, if there is any point of comparison, i would say it is with Val Lewton, who seemingly loved making stories about the supernatural aspects of human relationships (and the screeching train reminded me of the braking bus in 'Cat People'). By the end of 'Lemming' i totally accepted the bizarre rationality implied as an explanation for the whole thing - those actors and Moll made me believe it.

Well made, glossy, professional, well acted in fact everything about it was great except the story and a weak premise. I like the fact it was unpredictable and you didn't know what was going to happen next, but that was because I couldn't make my mind up as to what type of film it was.

If you believe there should be no rules in story telling and you can throw in what you like, when you like then you will like this. On the other hand if you think David Lynch and his like make it up as they go along in between having a good laugh at everybody who reads so much into their films then you won't.