Lemming

The latest festival in Cannes (2005 that is) was opened by the French movie "Lemming" which meant a lot for the French cinema as after all, it was directed by Dominik Moll. Moll has already been described as the French equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock and even if 4 movies are a bit too less to speak of such a comparison, the symptoms are there. Moll's previous masterpiece ("Harry") was already one of the finest pieces of French cinema you'll ever going to see and in "Lemming" Moll just goes on the path that suits him best. We are witnessing a modern couple, Benedicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Alain (Laurent Lucas), who are building their luck. Everything's got pretty disturbed when one day Alain decides to invite his boss (Andre Dussolier). The wife's boss (Charlotte Rampling) seems at first a shameless bitch who is fed up with her husband's flirts but a deeper look, let us see that the woman is more than just a tragic figure. Coincidence or not, but all problems started when the couple found a lemming in their sink. A lemming is a sort of rat which only lives in Scandinavian countries (and we're somewhere in France) whose way of living is determined by its suicidal character. It's business as usual that people start to compare one movie to another but Moll made a great effort which can compete with the best things François Truffaut has done. The viewer is like some peeping tom who sees the high and lows in a marriage and it goes hand in hand with genius acting from both Charlotte Gainsbourg and Laurent Lucas. Now already one of the movies of 2005!

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.

Things begin to slide precipitously downhill for the young and upwardly mobile Getty's upon recovering a lemming very far from home in the trap under the kitchen sink at their home in a staid and dreary suburbia in Toulouse, France. More imbalance takes place as the husband has his boss and wife over for supper. The wife (Charlotte Rampling) creates a scene and the evening ends badly. She attempts later to seduce Allain Getty then follows this with a very destructive visit to Getty's wife. The Getty marriage now begins to disintegrate. Irrationality ensues, the ugliness increases-very slowly. Eventually we learn how the lemming ended up so far away from home. The end.

Lemming is a slow moving, lifelessly acted "suspense thriller" that is shooting for something higher with the ambiguous presence of the title character. I'm sure it has a variety of symbolic significances that the cahiers crowd could ruminate over for hours. For me though it is a contrived distraction that is unable to save this turgid Chabrol like (I apologize for being redundant.)bore and its cast of zombies.

Looking like a calcified Charles Bronson, Charlotte Rampling is miserable in every way. She's had an impressive late career with powerfully enigmatic performances in such films as Under the Sand and Swimming Pool but she fails to get beyond robotic in Lemming. The rest of Director Dominik Moll's cast barely remains awake. The audience may be more hard pressed to do so. Lemming has a couple of jolting moments but no where near enough to keep it mildly interesting for over two hours. It belongs with the doomed lemming, down the drain.

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