Lemming

I saw this film today and thought it was beautifully constructed with layers of metaphor and 'reality' that one can choose to attend to at will. I don't think the film was Hitchcockian - the pace was much more leisurely and atmospheric than most Hitchcock or American films. However, if there is any point of comparison, i would say it is with Val Lewton, who seemingly loved making stories about the supernatural aspects of human relationships (and the screeching train reminded me of the braking bus in 'Cat People'). By the end of 'Lemming' i totally accepted the bizarre rationality implied as an explanation for the whole thing - those actors and Moll made me believe it.

A cool thriller with a supernatural air, 'Lemming' has much to commend it, including a walk on role (so to speak) for the Pic du Midi d'Osseau, one of my favourite Pyrennean mountains. The story is actually quite limited, but M. Pollock and his wife both make an interesting pair of monsters and a frighteningly believable couple, and the movie's four-handed structure pits them nicely against the model pairing of the hero and his wife. Ultimately, it might have been better had the lemmings of the title seemed more connected to the meat of the story; but the acting is good, even if the hero is just a little too reserved for us to really feel his angst.

Lemming starts promisingly with the dinner party from hell. A young, much in love couple is preparing dinner for their guests, his boss and the boss' wife. Alain Getty (Laurent Lucas) is the newly hired home automation designer at The Pollack Company. He's smart, decent and good-looking. His wife, Benedicte, is alert, pretty and bright. She cooks. He tastes. They smooch. Then their guests show up. His boss, Richard Pollack (Andre Dussollier), is older, gracious and friendly. Alice Pollack (Charlotte Rampling), grim and puffy-eyed, is something else, from the sunglasses she wears at table to the glass of wine she throws in her husband's face. In between, the young couple hears her accusations of his infidelity. She trains her venom on the young wife as she leaves. On top of all this, the kitchen sink's drain is stopped up with what we later find is a lemming.

So far, so good.

But if we were expecting the clever, unnerving suspense of director Dominik Moll's With A Friend Like Harry from 2000, we're going to be not only disappointed but also surprised at Moll's miscues. The blame must be shared with his co-writer, Gilles Marchand. There simply are no motivations or situations that arise other than what, over and over, Moll and Marchand create out of thin air for us. That is, of course what the movies are all about. But with A Friend Like Harry, all we had to do was accept one unlikely situation...that there might be someone lurking about like Harry. Once we swallowed that hook, we were caught. With that accepted, everything else Moll threw at us was accepted, however unlikely or extreme. With Lemming, there's no first cause that makes sense or is believable. The hook we have to swallow is that Alain's hormone's will respond to the aging stimulus of Mrs. Pollack's unsmiling attempt at seduction, and that Alain's involuntary and momentary arousal makes him just as guilty as if he'd agreed to jump in the sack with her. Alain doesn't agree to do that, regardless of how a few hormones responded, because he honorably loves his wife. Moll needs a motivating cause for what he has in store for us. This isn't believable enough, but Moll doesn't seem to notice. He gives us a director's indulgence. Consequently, everything that follows is a director's indulgence, too.

The first 46 minutes of Lemming, even if not especially engaging, have a nice uneasiness about them, culminating in a genuinely unexpected action. From then on, however, I was never especially engaged in the creepy shenanigans of isolated cabins, dreams, waves of rodents, adultery, the Mini Flying Webcam, hints of the Exorcist, murder and even the origin of lemmus lemmus and how one got stuck in a drain in the south of France. All seemed to be manipulations of a director who, this time, might not have been as smart as he thought he was.

If Moll with his lemming wants to deal in metaphors, perhaps our metaphor should be the last thing we hear...Mama Cass and the rest of the Mamas and the Papas singing Dream a Little Dream of Me. It's a great song but we have it pasted a little pretentiously onto the end of a French psycho thriller. As hard as this is to say, Mama Cass doesn't exactly swing it.

The latest festival in Cannes (2005 that is) was opened by the French movie "Lemming" which meant a lot for the French cinema as after all, it was directed by Dominik Moll. Moll has already been described as the French equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock and even if 4 movies are a bit too less to speak of such a comparison, the symptoms are there. Moll's previous masterpiece ("Harry") was already one of the finest pieces of French cinema you'll ever going to see and in "Lemming" Moll just goes on the path that suits him best. We are witnessing a modern couple, Benedicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Alain (Laurent Lucas), who are building their luck. Everything's got pretty disturbed when one day Alain decides to invite his boss (Andre Dussolier). The wife's boss (Charlotte Rampling) seems at first a shameless bitch who is fed up with her husband's flirts but a deeper look, let us see that the woman is more than just a tragic figure. Coincidence or not, but all problems started when the couple found a lemming in their sink. A lemming is a sort of rat which only lives in Scandinavian countries (and we're somewhere in France) whose way of living is determined by its suicidal character. It's business as usual that people start to compare one movie to another but Moll made a great effort which can compete with the best things François Truffaut has done. The viewer is like some peeping tom who sees the high and lows in a marriage and it goes hand in hand with genius acting from both Charlotte Gainsbourg and Laurent Lucas. Now already one of the movies of 2005!

The automation engineer Alain Getty (Laurent Lucas) and his beloved wife Bénédicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) have just moved to the suburb of Bel-Air. Alain has developed the prototype of a flying web-cam for Pollock S.A., a high-tech company. After a successful presentation of his project to their clients, Alain invites his boss Richard Pollock (André Dussollier) and his wife Alice (Charlotte Rampling) for dinner at his home. The couple arrives late, and Alice is extremely rude, insulting her husband and the young couple, and forcing Richard to leave the house earlier. During the night, Alain finds a rare Scandinavian lemming stuck in the siphon of the sink in the kitchen. On the next night, Alice unsuccessfully tries to seduce Alain after-hours in the laboratory of the company. On the next afternoon, she visits Bénédicte to apologize her behavior and cynically tells her sexual harassment to her husband. Then she locks herself in a room and commits suicide. On the next days, Bénédicte changes her behavior and relationship with Alain, seeming to be possessed by Alice.

"Lemming" is an engaging and intriguing surrealistic thriller. The screenplay follows the school of David Lynch, with a mysterious metamorphosis of Bénédicte into Alice, at least in her behavior. The development of the original and suspenseful plot is fantastic, making impossible to guess what is exactly happening. The beauties of Charlotte Rampling, with almost sixty years old, and Charlotte Gainsbourg are impressive, and the seduction of Alice is an extremely sexy, erotic and beautiful scene. "Lemming" was a great surprise for me and I highly recommend this film for viewers that aim to see a challenging movie where it is impossible to find what is daydream or reality. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Lemming, Instinto Animal" ("Lemming, Animal Instinct")