L'appât

FRESH BAIT provides a most accurate portrayal of the feckless immorality of a certain category of youthful criminality. The film is based on the true story of three Parisian roommates; a young girl and two guys, who attempt to make a living by extorting wealthy men. The girl promises sexual favors at the rich man's home, and then the two young men arrive bent on robbery and mayhem. However, the three perpetrators' childish and uninformed moral sense overshadows, and far exceeds, the nature of their violently evil actions, and this makes the impact all the more shocking. The viewer is forced to ponder, "What were they thinking"?, and, by the end of the film, you realize that not one of the three felons had the slightest clue as to the implications of their actions. A MUST SEE.

8 years before Bertolucci and The Dreamers, 18 years before Coppoa (Sofia) and The Bling Ring, Tavernier demonstrates once again the modernity of the subjects chosen for his movies, with the tell of a youth without bearings - even moral - and dreaming to live the life sold by cinema, magazines and ads. Not able anymore to distinguish reality and fiction, good or bad, or recognize that acts have consequences.

We also discover Marie Gillain as an actress (it is strange to see in retrospect how few good roles she has had since) that shines over this movie. The rest of the cast does not embarass that performance and is very good as well.

This movie is also a movie where violence is shown as it is, cold, brutal, terrible. Which opposes to its magnification often seen in Hollywood movies, symbolized by different scenes in "The Bait" like the one with Scarface or in the video shop. The profit they take is all the same incriminating against violence.

To conclude, Tavernier offers us a very powerful movie, I really recommend it.

It starts as a funny film about young people. But soon it will be disturbing and I think this is because there is no one to identify with. The real violence and the incompetence is hard to stand but as far as the film tells its story the more convincing it will be. It´s an important discussion about gold, commercials and peoples weakness against it. This is not a reassuring film and it will keep you awake !

Björn Landström, Lerdala Sweden

This movie inspired from actual events reminds me another film just released; guess what: 24 JOURS, the story of the abduction, torture and killing of Ilan Allimi, also a true event occurred in 2006. The schemes are very alike but not filmed in the same way. The Alexandre Arcady film is more tense, more suspenseful. And that doesn't reduce the efficiency of the Tavernier's piece of work.

I like both. They are just made in two different ways.

That's all.

More than eighteen years are between the two of them.

the best would be to watch them both one after the other, to compare at the best. A very interesting experience.

Maybe the title of the movie misled some viewers, Tavernier's "Bait" is not a common "thriller". The plot is indeed quite loose, the relationships between the characters are not a pretext for great drama, and you will hear no loud orchestral music in the climax (because there is no climax). Yet the emotion is here, thanks to the charm and subtle portraying of "Nathalie" by Marie Gilain (the rest of the cast is very good too). The great strong point of the movie is to smash every cliché about violence in modern society. Tavernier does a kind of "movie about movie viewers" (the youngsters watch a De Palma's "Scarface" video over and over) and in the French reality, violence is not exciting, not graphic, not choreographic, only real... The characters are even able to close their eyes on their own violence very efficiently as if nothing really happened while it's possible to avoid it's consequences... This kind of "modern" approach is really hard to achieve unless the directing is really good, and many bad directors tend to use the same tricks, such as hand held camera, etc... some other can't help emphasizing too much on the darkest aspects of the human nature, but here, on the contrary, there's a positive energy that flows from the characters (which makes the meaning so ambiguous and interesting) and as for the directing, the free but controlled camera moves and the general pace of the movie, gives it an elegant style which serves the script.