La vie nouvelle

This was recommended to me as adventurous cinema and knowing a previous film by the same maker I jumped at the opportunity. That film was all about the serial eye lusting for contact in the night it causes, and this is extended here in a film about a girl (a prostitute in a seedy club) and various men who lust for contact, how the lust for contact becomes spectacle that dehumanizes.

This broader lust is the delusion of mind. A conventional story does exist in some outer world we can discern (about girls stolen from some village in Kossovo and sold as prostitutes) but all that reaches us is in this state of delusion is a stream of consciousness, the hallucinative ebb and comingling of memory and desire.

It's neither pretentious as some say nor radically new; it would be the first if it was presented as we see out of some unrecognizable caprice to strut difference as insight. Instead it's tooled this way so we can experience with our eyes the participants' confusion, agony, hurt, by losing the larger world in which things acquire their proper place and swim instead in a fluid mindstream.

A long history supports it that goes all the way back to silent film, the film is a modern silent in essence, words are few, experiments in seeing are everything. Two were the most defining modes in the 20s; one was DW Griffith's that evolved from Kurosawa to Kubrick and Spielberg, destinies on a historic stage. The other was Epstein's, this is from his genealogy where life is flow, and characters are globs of color that smear and saturate the air.

There are many such impressions here that saturate outwards from inside, a devilish dance between seductor and lithe victim in a club, harrowing images of copulation near the end. But I'm reminded again that the nihilist is our saddest loss. The whole is an essay on ego, the deluded ego that clings to desire, the suffering caused by ego, the horror of the suffering; this is all in the abstract experience of what contorts space, no themes is explained to us. But you must want the way that leads out of them again.

Premiered in 2002, Philippe Grandrieux's controversial second feature film La Vie Nouvelle opens a new type of experimentation with form while at the same time challenging the viewer's tolerance. This film is not used as a means to reflect, but a device probing deeply into the desires and states of mind of the characters. Grandrieux's usual styles - shaky images, techno music, and impulsive camera position (for viewers to approximate the characters' complex and intense emotions) remain. Sex scenes are often shown in darkness and even infra-red, leading the viewer to ponder upon the suggested but unseen violence.

Contrary to the forward-looking title, the new life is a bleak one. At a brothel-like hotel in an East European city, the young American soldier Seymour (Zach Knighton) encounters and becomes obsessed with the prostitute Mélania (Anna Mouglalis). After an initiatory traumatic hair cutting scene, the human trafficker Boyan transforms Mélania into a commodity (she is carried around like a piece of weightless luggage). In this degraded urban space, men's bestiality merges with that of dogs. It is the disfigured bodies and gestures, instead of usual conversation or screams, that depicts the horror. The sensitive Seymour eventually attempts to purchase Mélania outright. Signing a pact with Mélania's infamous master, Seymour is left with a handsome price to pay.

This is a love it or hate it auteur film about control, evilness, objectified bodies, internalised fear, and extreme cinematic expression, with morally-suspect moments bound by Grandrieux's highly perceptive vision and atmospheric images.

In modern day Eastern Europe life is hard and for young women prostitution is one of the only career options and one taken, reluctantly, by Melania. She attracts the attentions of an American, Seymour, who becomes obsessed with her, paying more and more money for time with her until he eventually wants to buy her outright. She has two pimps with differring emotional attachments to her and she is generally passed around like some piece of baggage with no feelings of her own. However, we are in "modern art-house cinema" territory, so conventions like narrative structure, lighting the subject so it can be seen, camera techniques that add to rather than distract from the action and a vaguely consistent plot can all be abandoned. Much of the time I had no idea what was supposed to be happening and very rarely did I care. People began leaving the screening almost before the last latecomers had arrived and I don't think I've ever seen so many people walk out.

Images are important to the director - characters slowly emerge from or disappear into a dark screen, we get long lingering shots of nothing in particular and one sex scene takes place in infra-red. In fact for such an unconventional film the sex scenes were remarkably ordinary; missionary positions between naked people in bed abounded and there were no drugs or related weirdness. But perhaps these days being ordinary is unconventional.

On the whole, almost entirely without merit.

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*

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.