L'appât

In Paris, the eighteen year-old Nathalie Magnan (Marie Gillain) works in a clothing store during the day and escorts successful men in a nightclub in the night. Nathalie lives with her boyfriend Eric (Olivier Sitruk) and his moronic friend Bruno (Bruno Putzulu) in an apartment she rents. Eric dreams on traveling to the United States with Nathalie to open their on business but his father does not finance him. Eric plots a scheme with Bruno, Nathalie and her friend Patricia (Clotilde Courau) to raise money. They should go with their costumers to their apartments and once inside the apartment, they should the door open so that they could rob the apartment. Things do not work well and Patricia decides to give up and not participate in the heists. But when their plan goes wrong, Eric and Bruno have to kill their victim.

"L'appât" is a French movie by Bertrand Tavenier that show an alienated youth in France that thinks in getting easy money despite killing their victims. The impressive story seems to be very realistic and when I saw it for the first time in the 90's, I was scared with the behavior of Nathalie, Eric and Bruno. Now the violence has increased worldwide and the impact of the murders reduces, but anyway, "L'appât" is still a great movie. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Isca" ("The Bait")

Great movie by Bertrand Tavernier. He is playing with the idea of a classical American thriller, which the male protagonists admire so much, as well as they look for the "American dream" in a Paris in crisis behind its "charmant" appearance.

Tavernier's intention is more realistic and, as life, less perfect than a classical script (curiously, the film is based in real facts). That's why we don't know many times where the film is going. But Tavernier employs that time to show us details of the life of very well-built characters. Specially good is the acting of the young woman.

Sad (but interesting!) impression in the end of the characters' "career". As a result of that, we have the impression of a not very healthy society, and without any need to insist by Tavernier during the movie. I recommend it, I feel it is even a bit underrated here.

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.

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.

This 90's oeuvre of well-known French director Bertrand Tavernier is certainly one of the most impressive dramas about alienated youth in movie history. The way Nathalie and her friends (excellent performances, especially from lead actress Marie Gillain!) behave towards each other and the human beings they encounter and destroy on their long trip downhill, raises deep questions about contemporary ethics and moral values. The story, based on a true account, is depicted in a cold, almost documentary style, which makes it even more disturbing. Not for the squeamish!