Pacifiction

Everyone can still remember the violent protests around the world when the newly elected French President Jacques Chirac ordered nuclear bomb tests to be carried out in the Mururoa Atoll in 1995. The people of French Polynesia can remember this particularly well. The French High Commissioner (Benoit MAGIMEL) in Tahiti constantly feels this, as he tries to hear the grass grow in Papeete through his constant presence and constant conversations with all possible sections of the population. The French film star Benoit MAGIMEL (CANNES 2001: Silver Palm for LA PIANISTE) plays this brilliantly in his white suit, which has almost become his uniform. In individual set pieces, we as viewers experience how precarious life must be in the holiday paradise of Tahiti. Whether in the homoerotic atmosphere of Morton's (Sergi LOPEZ) bar or during breathtaking surfing on the beach. These last-mentioned shots are so magnificent that you can almost feel the waves just by watching them.

With this film, Spanish director Albert SERRA takes us on a nearly three-hour trip into the heart of French darkness. With the fantastic Benoit MAGIMEL, we stand on the dream beach of Tahiti and use binoculars to search the surface of the Pacific for a submarine that could provide the first indication of suspected impending nuclear weapons tests.

This film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022. If you like films like APOCALYPSE NOW, QUERELLE and TROPICAL MALADY, you shouldn't miss this event.

This is a truly boring film. It's long, seemed pointless, had scenes that went on forever to no good purpose, had essentially no characters to speak of, and made little sense. I can enjoy long, leisurely paced films, like "The Traveling Players" or "Satantango," but there has to be a reason to be patient and a payoff for doing so. There is neither here.

At the screening I attended, the director, beforehand, said that the last 45 minutes was really special. That was a bait and switch, since they were just like the rest of the film. If anyone goes into this film expecting anything at all like a thriller, they will be disappointed, and disappointed for a rather long time.

The director, speaking afterwards, said he wanted to avoid cliche. In one respect, he failed miserably. The dialog, I believe, was improvised by the actors, rather than being scripted. As a result, it was banal, repetitive, and pointless. There is no more tedious cliche than weak improvised dialog.

It's common for one reviewing a long film to say something like "there's a good 90 minute film in there." Here, there's a mediocre ten minute travelogue in there. There are some pretty shots of Polynesia, and a good surfing sequence, but you pay a heavy price to get to those, and if you're willing to watch a long, weak film to see some nice shots of Tahiti, you're better off with the 60s version of "Mutiny on the Bounty."

After I got home from the screening, I cleaned my cats' litter boxes. I found that experience both more entertaining and more intellectually stimulating than "Pacifiction."

There are some serious qualities there. First of all, who doesn't want a trip to Tahiti?? There are "beautiful shots", as they say: waves, skies, nature, Benoît Magimel pensive on the beach, sometimes on an absolutely magnificent music score. It's a film that can be just admired as is.

It's also a film that can be used to admire Magimel, to hear him speak, wavering, a little mushy, always on the verge of tripping over his feet... It's quite fascinating.

But his performance is not enough to compensate for a slow mise-en-scene by default, rigid, flat, desperately sterile. It is the disease of a certain European-Asian festival cinema which under-cuts its mise-en-scene out of ease and habit. Despite everything, there are some exciting ideas here and there, never to be forgotten, a woman framed in a certain way for no particular reason, that's something but that's not much.

And then what do Magimel and the others really have to say anyway? The story is of very questionable interest. He is a high commissioner of the French Republic who navigates between local councilors against a backdrop of rumours of a resumption of nuclear tests in the region... I've heard of more exciting stories.

Serras thriller is visually exuberant as it is subtle and minimalist in terms of plot. Making good on its lead motto that 'politics is like a nightclub', for almost three hours the viewer sees barely more than Benoît Magimel in his role as bon vivant politician De Moller philandering around the island of French Polynesia, lending an ear to its manifold inhabitants, drinking, feasting, and preaching about his limited administrative role in the grand order of things, interrupted only by stunning episodes of visual allegories on geopolitics. Yet, I found watching De Moller in his ambiguous social interactions infinitely charming and astonishingly engrossing. On its allegorical level I found this movie truly mesmerizing - and I am not easily mesmerized. It is a gloomy thriller about nuclear balance of power, about ants in a battle of elephants, but only behind the curtain and only the abstract. It will therefore appear slow and uneventful to the ones who are looking for some concrete down-to-earth action.

Hype has blinded me again, folks... I love slow burn thrillers like The Day of The Jackal, where the actions are shown in the movie step by step, but without losing its suspense and intrigue. I knew that Pacifiction would be slow... but not THAT slow!

This was a huge dissapointment, almost 3 hours of nothing. Serra is nothing more than a pretentious and a egomaniac director, and this movie shows that.

Pure boredom, there wasn't a mystery or even a bit of suspense to keep watching this thing... nothing.

The visuals are the reason why I gave this film a 5/10. Too good for a waste of film this is.

The visuals were so good... that led me to watch this atrocity to good cinema.

God... I'm so angry right now. This is the kind of trash that makes people go watch Marvel instead, the same stupid movie everyday instead of searching for something new and original. Because of the fear of finding a pretentious and boring film like this.