La vie nouvelle

Grandrieux's 'la Vie Nouvelle' explores one man's obsession and fall into a base and instinctive human. With extraordinary visual flair Grandrieux introduces us to an un-named war torn Eastern European city where Zachary Knighton's soldier on leave falls for a 'dancer' in a sleazy club.

With sparse dialogue and complex narrative we understand the complexities of the soldier's feelings, his love of his closest friend and the simplicity of morals in a city razed to concrete. Grandrieux approach to his camera work and sound design forces you to become involved in the characters, he brings us close to their emotional point of view never allowing us too far back form the action. Indeed at times we are so intimately close to the characters' mindset that it can be hard to not turn away in horror.

indeed, whilst this film is in some ways 'another European art-house film...' it could also be classified as a film in the horror genre, the final sequence involving the soldier's friends is shocking and violent.

This is an important film from a director with plenty to say and who is clearly bold enough to say it differently and with considerable force.

see this film

You'd be hard put to find rubbish more noxious than Grandrieux's LA VIE NOUVELLE (NEW LIFE) in a dozen metal cannister's at the local dump.

I like stuff that experiments, but I despise stuff that experiments with nothing on its mind -- or certainly nothing that the director is capable of communicating.

Essentially, it's the tiresome story of a pimp wanting to own and abuse a hooker. In some camps, that simple synopsis might sound promising, but you'll be retreating fast once you see said synopsis executed (poorly).

We get long, disconnected, blurred images, a wanky soundtrack, actors moping, sex scenes that are boring and interminable and nude girls who'd be better off clothed.

This flick was recommended to me by the head of a major international film festival who thought it was right up my alley. I'm insulted that he'd think I'd buy this trash.

Staying to the end of the screening took iron discipline and now I want my two hours back.

Nauseaus.

If you are a fan of bleak, depressing cinema, there is a whole range of interesting films you could watch. There are the realistic attempts of Haneke, you could try the stylized madness of Aronofski or you could dig deeper and immerse yourself in the vileness of Gaspar Noé. Maybe try some late Moodysson to push the boundaries. You won't walk away refreshed from any of these directors.

And then there is La Vie Nouvelle.

I've seen my fair share of depressing movies but little dare come near the territory where La Vie Nouvelle resides. The closest comparison to make is Irreversible's Rectum scene expanded to a full 100 minutes. Grandrieux doesn't make it easy for those watching his film. Little dialog is used and the background story is sketchy at best. Hardly any information reaches the viewer of the things he is witnessing, yet this is largely unimportant to understand the core of the film.

A lot of the film's punch comes from the darkened visuals. Not a single bright, positive color is seen throughout the film. Everything is shot in saturated, bleak colors, leaving little to no sign of hope. As the film progresses, the camera work becomes more and more frantic, positioning itself close to the actors and serving the viewer a mess of blurry shapes and suggestive images. Many shots are out of focus and often people are only visible as dark outlines against muddy backgrounds.

Aside from the visuals, the soundtrack is just as dirty as the images. There is hardly any dialog and quite a few scenes are simply silent. Sometimes this silence is disturbed by creepy illbient and muffled sounds. Later in the film, more and more rhythmic electronic sounds enter the film. And to top that, Grandrieux plays nasty tricks with the volume to increase the ill effect.

This nightmarish atmosphere climaxes in an inverted black and white scene. Shots of agonized faces, screaming mouths and mud-covered, crawling bodies are accompanied by distorted screams and brooding illbient music. The moment Grandrieux cranks up the volume this scene becomes immortal.

There's little story to be followed, and even if there was I really didn't care much for it. The movie is set in the underground and has no shame in showing the worst side of human kind. Sexual abuse, physical violence and power struggles dominate the movie, although in terms of actual perversities the film is not all that shocking.

La Vie Nouvelle is not a film that is fun to watch. But it is an impressive film that succeeds as no other in putting down a vile, bleak and uneasy atmosphere. Some parts of the movie were hard to sit through, even repulsive and just felt wrong. Which is something I haven't felt in a long time, and I don't think I've ever felt it as strongly in a film before.

This feeling is not something everyone will appreciate, but if you're looking for a depressing film which will sucker punch you across the room, you can't find much better than this one. It will be one of those films I need to own on DVD to never watch it again. 4.5*/5.0*

La Vie nouvelle is a succession of great images. In terms of beauty, Grandrieux hit's the spot. If you have seen and liked Tarkovski, you can clearly appreciate the time taken here to create a mood, to create beautiful images. La Vie nouvelle doesn't need any plot, I think most of the ideas are explicitly shown in the film. This film doesn't need any "wow-factor" either, the bangs and explosions come from the inside, while watching the movie. We could go as far as saying that Grandrieux's film is a poetry of moving pictures. People that say that this film is rubbish, or has "nothing to offer" should reconsider watching this movie again.

If La Vie nouvelle is rubbish and has nothing to offer then maybe you could tell the same thing about Marco Ferriri's "La Grande Bouffe" ...or even of Royston Tan's "Shiwu". The thing relating those two films to La Vie nouvelle is the fact that all those movies show us reality, as it is.

I saw this film for the first time today in critique class and i'll be going in tomorrow's other group class to see it again. Cinema isn't dead, this movie just proves it

This is a film that provokes strong reactions, usually negative ones. But then that's always been the privilege of the avant-garde. Grandrieux has stripped away almost all story, dialogue, character, and motivation - except for the darkest psychosexual impulses. This film is about those impulses in the most direct possible way - it immerses us in them directly and relentlessly. Not through character and story, but directly through the audiovisual plane. He refuses to leaven or soften the experience by giving us any character we can identify with; and this is surely the point: it's a film that directly mimics the point where humans become animals, at the mercy of their basest impulses. Impossible to overcome them. This is made clear by the repeated images of wild dogs, etc. The film may both repel and bore viewers with this insistence. But there is no denying that Grandrieux is a remarkably original director in his use of image and sound. It's worth knowing that his background is in video art. The film positively swelters inside a thick womblike soundtrack of buzzing, throbbing noise; the camera sears depraved, repetitive images on our eyeballs. The film seems to exist outside time and place - some sort of east european setting is the only clue we have to whereabouts. It feels more like a circle of hell than anywhere on earth. And that's precisely the point.