Sombre

in the usual sense of the term. This is a show for your senses : view of course, but also hear (the music of Alan Vega), smell or touch. The characters are filmed so close you can actually feel them in their gestures, you feel the love, you smell the fear. The picture is very dark, often fuzzy, never stable. It keeps on jumping from the lights of the car, to children's' screams, to womens' hips and hands on their throats. The film has raised a critical debate, some defining it as immoral and almost pornographic, the others considering it a pure chef-d'oeuvre. To my mind, it is both, and more than that. A real experience of cinema.

There are films that have a very difficult and challenging topic, that may also be very explicit. There are films that are shot in a way that makes them difficult to watch; very quick cuts; rapid camera movement; odd direction. There are films that have a compelling story-line.

This film is all of those.

To begin with, you may be forgiven for thinking that the cinematography methods used here are just to make it look 'arty'. However, as it progresses, I think the extremely dark, edgy, and confused imagery is a reflection of the state of Marc Barbé's mind; closed, confused, searching; helpless. The almost total lack of dialogue adds to the tension, as you are pulled along to an astonishing climax that will leave you thinking.

Whilst you are watching it not everything makes sense, however, in the days that follow, you will find yourself revisiting scenes in you head, wondering what they meant, working some of them out.

Sombre is a very difficult film to watch. It will affect you. You will think about it afterwards. To me, this is what films are all about. What you get out of this film is directly proportional to the amount you put in.

Tonight 'Sombre' premiered in the Netherlands. Present in the audience was the director of Sombre, mr. Philippe Grandrieux. He is known mostly as a maker of documentaries and videos, and it shows in Sombre, his first movie. Shaking camera's (he told the audience he shot most of the footage with a 35mm camera (about 24 kilo's heavy, that's gotta hurt at the end of the day), extreme close-ups and experiments with dark and light. It absolutely complements the story.

About the story. It tells the story of Jean (Marc Barbé), a man that has many sexual encounters with women, but ends up killing them. Why, we do not know. I think he tries to love women, but at the end his lust takes over and controls him. After a couple encounters he meets a woman played by Elina Lowensohn. Apparantly she's something else. She also has a history she's not completely happy with (why we don't know) and she joins Jean with her sister. It doesn't take long before Jean tries to rape and kill the sisters. They escape. But apparently she is somehow touched by Jean, a touch she can't forget (a romantic vision about love, says Grandrieux). She goes back to him. They have sex but at the end Jean drives her away. He can't be with her, because for the first (in the movie) time he experiences love, but he still can't control his lust and she can't be with him because she might end up being dead. Oh bitter irony...The movie ends with spectators of the Tour de France, a metaphor for reality watching this morbid fairy tale. And it is a bit of a fairy tale. Jean is a puppet player. He does a show in front of crowd of children (one of the best scenes in the film). He plays the wolf, the Beast! Eline plays the Beauty ( at the end of the film, I have my doubts about that, but anyway...).

It's a difficult movie! Grandrieux tells us that one of his main influences is the silent movie. Silent movies have spots on the film, the cuts are clearly visible, it's rough, 'it stays in the ears, even when you can't hear the sound'. And Sombre is rough and dirty. In some scenes you can almost touch objects, for example hair or a woman's thy. Other scenes are very serene and still, but you still feel the objects. Grandrieux tells us that he want to make the audience edit the movie realtime. And that was exactly what I did. You need some imagination with this picture, you have to fill in the blanks, because not much information and dialogue is given to you. What Grandriex achieves with this, is a connection between the audience and the film. 'Edit the movie the same time you are watching it'. Man, you gotta love that one.

Still, I would liked to have some more info on the characters and their history. I liked to know what makes them do the things they do. Now they are just doing them. And with almost no moral in it. There are some scenes where the theme hope is explored, but you got to dig deep. That results in dividing the audience in two teams. You either like it or you hate it. One more thing, the music. The music by Alan Vega is excellent.

See this movie, make your own story of it and make your own conclusions. Sombre is good material for the eyes and ears and the mind. Phillipe Grandrieux is a kind man who tought that the only way he could express his feelings with this theme, was by film. I rate it 7 out of 10.

I saw this film at the Rotterdam Film Festival. The response to this film was divided. Some people applauded, others left the theater before the movie ended. It definitely was a film that hit me. The roughness of the cuts, sounds and lighting, in combination with very few dialogues and conversations, brings about an eerie atmosphere. This is not exactly the peaceful and jolly French countryside as shown in the average travel magazine one would take a glance at! Grandieux makes it look like a hideous, dark place, which (to my mind) suggest the acts of the main character are in some way influenced by that atmosphere. The strongest point of this movie, is the absence of any moral content. ´Why´ is not a question that Grandieux has tried to bring across to the viewers. It is precisely this lack of moral content that frightens some spectators. I can imagine that. However, they cannot deny that it is a very original film. In spite of the fact that the ´serial murderer theme´ can be found in many movies, the approach to this theme is completely different in this film. This is definitely a film which I will remember! I think people will either love it or hate it -I suppose the majority of people will be ´haters´-, actually I am surprised it made some Dutch cinemas. I recommend this film to anyone who likes original, non conventional movies. Give it a try. If you hate it: a VCR has an eject button.

Far from morality and any kind of convention, Sombre is a film that's all about seeing the world through the eyes of a killer. Sound and image on the hand of Grandrieux are combined into something that can only be described as a simulation of a panic attack.

The film is basically about a travelling puppeteer who kills women just before having sex them. Most of these women are prostitutes or strippers and it's natural that when he meets one whose concern is not to arouse him sexually, he finds himself unable to treat her the same. While that may seem contrived, Grandrieux is more concerned with the idea to travelling or moving than the actual story. The plot is there to follow all the changing locations and scenery and along with that the evolving emotions of the two main characters. It's actually real interesting to see that the film suggests that move is most likely the most natural human act, in the sense that being in motion is a type of struggle (interior or exterior) which is the only road to evolution and completion.