Les morsures de l'aube

Antoine De Caunes is a clever and funny TV-man who became a fairly good cinema actor. "Les morsures de l'aube" is his first movie as a director, and for me, not unforgettable. The storyline was a good start : a young nightclubber (by day, he sleeps in a swimming pool) tries any trick to go inside fashionable places. One day, he pretends to know a mysterious man called "Jordan". Another mysterious man gives him money to find this Jordan, the enquiry starts. First of all, Jordan has a sister, Violaine, played by Assia Argento. The brother and the sister are known as a scary couple, the live by night only, they bite people's neck and have weird manners... This story was not a bad idea I guess, and there is a lot of funny scenes, even some absurd situations. The photography is not bad, it looks like a long length advertising for a perfume or something. Assia Argento has a strong seduction power, Gérard Lanvin (the hero's great friend) plays as a real actor, but I'm afraid he is the only one ! When people talk, they quite don't open their mouth, the audience does not understand what they say, the best dialogs get lost by a poor or too indulgent actor direction. The end is a waste... I'm afraid that any "Buffy" episode is better than this movie. I gave it a 6/10 because I'm too kind.

In Paris, Antoine (Guillaume Canet) is a ne'er-do-well, using all the possible tricks the get into private parties and night–clubs. He lives the nightlife, and sleeps nearby a swimming pool of a gym club. He uses the name of a mysterious man known as Jordan to get into a private party, where an old man gives him 100,000.00 French Francs, with the promise of another 900,000.00, is he gets any information about the location of Jordan. Antoine and his friend Étienne (Gérard Lanvin) chases Jordan through the Parisian night, and Antoine meets Jordan's sister Violaine Charlier (Asia Argento). Violaine is considered a weird person, who bites her lovers in the neck. Antoine gets involves in weird and dangerous situations while pursuing Violaine and her brother. Something is missing in `Les Morsures de L'aube' to be a great movie. It has a beautiful photography of the night of Paris, excellent soundtrack and the sexy Asia Argento. However, the story is very confused and the conclusion is very disappointing. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `Cães da Noite' (`Dogs of the Night')

Vampire movies but without actually vampires, or maybe because you don't even understand this, so the movie can be described in one word, very confusing but also ridiculous. The film is very poor in plot and inventiveness and it doesn't even entertain much because even if seeing all the strange stuff of the nightlife is nice for the rest the film is ugly and above all as I already said it has a really confused plot with a common thread that is visible at the beginning but then gets lost in the chaos of the uselessness of the film. So concluding the movie is really rubbish and watching it is just a waste of time.

This film has atmosphere, no doubt. But something is missing, I'm not so sure what. Guillaume Canet does not convince as a tough guy who goes from bar to bar. He's got a face too pretty and doesn't look like a party animal. Asia Argento however is perfect. Sure, her role is more physical, she has not much to speak in French. I knew a girl with exactly the same Italian accent, sounds nice by the way. The whole movie is nice to look at, but somehow, you don't get too much involved. The end could have been more dramatic.

A nightclub gadfly (Guillame Canet) sneaks into a private party by claiming to know a guy named "Jordan". The host catches him and enlists his aid in finding this guy "Jordan", which he agrees to for some reason. After a series of misadventures that take up nearly half the movie he finds "Jordan" and his sexy sister "Violaine" (Asia Argento), and they turn out to be some kind of vampires. They have been making these kind of erotic vampire movies both in Europe and the US for forty years now, and they're really getting to be kind of old hat. This one is also kind of annoying in that it is very modern-day French (i.e. very glossy and derivative of Hollywood). Jean Rollin was doing this much better thirty or forty years ago.

It does have a couple of good points though. Asia Argento is absolutely smokin'-ass hot. She has a very memorable scene where she picks the protagonist up in a club and takes him home. She goes to fix him a drink, which she drugs, and comes back naked from the waist down (her pants mysteriously MIA). Moments later they're in bed where in his drugged state he hallucinates that she is THREE bottomless vampire girls all sucking on him (and not just in the vampiric sense!). The guy also has a wife(?) who is a lounge club singer. At one point she sings what appears to be a French lounge-club version of the great Willie Nelson song "The Night Life" (i.e. "The night life ain't no good life"/"But it's my life"). I'm not sure this is actually the Willie Nelson song, since it's in French, but if not, he should probably sue.

But if I sound a little uncertain of some things, it's because I didn't really understand French dialogue very well, but perhaps I should have tried more because the English subtitles were either generated by a malfunctioning computer translation program or written by someone who had no grasp on the English language. They're often unintentionally funny (such as when they try to translate bizarre French idioms directly into English), but mostly they're just distracting. I don't know if all of this adds up to a recommendation or a pan, but you can decide for yourself I guess.