After intriguing us all with Martha Marcy May Marlene as a producer, Antonio Campos turns director, with an equally unsettling, disturbing story that will live long in the mind.
Campos uses the star of that film, Brady Corbet, as his man character here, Simon. He’s a young American graduate who is taking some time out after a nasty split with Michelle, his girlfriend who we never see. He travels to Paris to stay with his cousin, and finds the French capital in winter the perfect place to lose himself in, with his broken French.
When Michelle stops replying to his emails and he tires of internet porn, he wanders the red light district, eventually becoming a client of Victoria (Mati Diop), a young escort. She is physically fragile, tiny, and emotionally vulnerable she reveals she has a son from a brutal and short-lived marriage. When Simon is attacked by street thugs she takes him in, and they begin a tentative love affair.
When money becomes a problem Simon hatches a plan; she will film her encounters with married men and blackmail them for cash.
There’s only one flaw in this set-up Simon is a compulsive liar and fantasist. Here’s where the film becomes intriguing or infuriating, depending on your point of view. We never actually see Simon attacked by the thugs for example did he do it to get Victoria’s sympathy> Almost every story he tells has at least two versions is he staying in a hotel or with his cousin? Is he studying eye surgery or French Literature?
Sometimes it’s obvious Simon is lying. What is sure is that this is a portrayal of a boy with severe problems a phone call to his mother ends up just being the word “mum mumbled several times, and in a crucial sex scene he merely grunts, terrifying the girl.
The atmosphere of the piece is brilliantly done Paris has never looked colder, bleaker and less inviting. There are no shots of the Eiffel Tower or Louvre here, just the grimy, graffiti-ridden backstreets and headache-inducing neon lamps of the underground. Simon is a dark character, literally so in his grey duffle coat and unshaven face, shambling around the city making up schemes with little empathy for the people around him. Victoria is a desperately sad character, her soulless nights in a dark, seedy club leaving her almost empty but with a shred of dignity left which Simon ruthlessly exploits.
Overall verdict: A dark noir mood piece with undercurrents of deep violence and tragedy. Not everyone will go with it but it’s a brave stab and it keeps the spell going for its running time until its cynical ending. Intriguing and infuriating in equal measure.
Reviewer Mike Martin