Regarde la mer

See The Sea is one of those films that's truly horrifying. This is one

of the few movies that gave me a true scare, not a cheap one. A mother

and her child live in a cottage that's located by the sea. Her husband

is always on a lengthy business trip, leaving the two alone for long

periods of time. One day, a female drifter comes into their lives. This

is when the fun begins. Mere words cannot describe what happens next.

But the end results are down right scary. If you want a nice scare or

if you enjoy a real good thriller every now and then, this one might be

your cup of tea.

Highly recommended.

A-

I taped this due to the recommend in the NYT television section and it was right. I kept getting apprehensive from the moment the backpacker turns up. The suspense of approaching terror reminded me of the growing sense of horror in Chabrol's Le Ceremonie.

Two quibbles: what mother would leave her baby in the bathtub for only a few seconds. And what mother would leave her baby alone on the beach? The mother obviously had a dark side to begin with; she was lonely (trying to reach her husband for several times without success) and was an easy prey to the backpacker. While the ending horrified me, it shouldn't have surprised me. What was great is the movie didn't drag on and was short.

Definitely worth watching and it left me shaken for a long time after-wards. Like Le Ceremonie, it will remain in my memory. Horror doesn't mean slash and gore.

This is a good shocker, using something of a Wuthering Heights scenario in miniature. It would have made an excellent 30-35 minute short, but was unnecessarily extended for probably commercial reasons. If some scenes appear to add little to the story, try to think about the link between:

-What Tatiana says about the consequencies of women ripping during childbirth

-Tatiana's disturbed personality

-the toothbrush incident

-Tatiana's knowledge of the men in the forest, yet lack of interest in joining Sasha for oral sex there

-The closing scene

The director nicely sets up the atmosphere of foreboding, which after all, is what horror movies depend on. I though the rope on the victim was a clever and disturbing touch; it's something I've never seen before, although I admittedly haven't seen many horror flicks. While you can guess how it ends fairly early on, the twists and turns in getting there, and the denouement, are quite unexpected. Compared with Ozon's other shorts, this has some substance mixed in with his usual puerile, tedious obsession with the dark side of human sexuality.

I like films like this (e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey)where you have to think afterwards about what you've seen, and maybe see it again, to make complete sense of it. Your mileage may vary.

Ever since I've started writing comments on IMDb I've been writing about European movies more than about American, and I've suggested readers to watch most of them. I gave good marks to French movies, though many others (mostly American) movie-lovers found them pretentious, false artistic or boring. But now here's the movie that expresses everything bad people have ever thought about French movies. Too short for a serious standard movie, too long for its weak story. Too much nudity for prudes, too little to be a soft-porn. Too many unimportant scenes, too little developing of characters. If Americans often make cover versions of French movies, this one shamelessly steels from US movies and still succeeds to make it boring, because we can expect in advance every important event and the revealing of secrets doesn't surprise us very much. Finally, the "shocking" end of the movie is in fact the only logical one.

What's good in the movie? Photography maybe, but it is so common in French movies that it's not necessary to emphasize it (no better, no worse than average French photo). The acting is also far below French standards. Paul as character might have also been omitted from the movie, he might have been left just as a person somewhere far away: it would have been intriguing for us to think if he existed at all. But it would be too, too much for writers to understand that.

Francois Ozon has proven himself an unflinching observer of the human animal's dark side. Its amazing how Ozon can infuse a short film about a seaside vacation with this much oppressive atmosphere and fright. The two characters are very human thanks to Ozon showing the good and bad of all parties. A film this gritty should never be called gratuitous. Rather it puts a good person and an evil one in a fishbowl for us to observe and although neither is perfect you are left with no question as to which is which at the end of one hour. Without a doubt worth your time and possibly purchase if someone else can speak to the quality of the DVD's available out there.