Injustice, Imprisonment, and Intent

Way back in the 1940s, inspired by the American film noir, the French developed a genre of crime thrillers of their own. They called it films policier. Just like the central character of noir is a morally ambiguous, skeptical, and disillusioned male; films policier, more often than not, revolves around a similar cynical male’s struggle against a stronger opponent. With time, like every other genre, films policier, too, has evolved and has even branched out into several sub-genres such as the daintily named polar (policier with a dash of mystery), neo-polar, and post-noir.

Recent French filmmakers, like Fred Cavayé, in his debut feature film Pour Elle (2008), a.k.a. Anything for Her, have added to the broad policier template by intermixing the thriller elements with an in-depth character study—that of a man on a mission against an act of injustice. The relentless ‘no-time-to-lose’ element that characterises a thriller is set in motion immediately with Pour Elle beginning to unfold even before the opening credits start flashing on the screen.

Divided into the classic three-act structure, the first of which is ‘The last three years’, the film introduces us to Julien Auclert (played by Vincent Lindon), a high-school French teacher, and his small family comprising his diabetic wife Lisa (Diane Kruger) and their toddler son Oscar (Lancelot Roch). Theirs is an idyllic life, which is turned on its head in an instant one morning when the police barge into their apartment and take Lisa into custody, on charges of murder—an accusation that astounds Lisa as much as it baffles Julien. Even though a detective is assigned to the case, and Julien believes wholeheartedly in Lisa’s innocence, as days pass by chances of Lisa’s acquittal become as distant as the mental gulf broadens between her and Oscar.

Then, the day of reckoning arrives. With not enough new evidence that could prove Lisa’s innocence, accompanied by the considerable amount of old evidence that was stacked against her, the lawyer informs the dumbfounded Julien that Lisa has been sentenced to twenty years in prison. With that pronouncement, the unassuming French teacher finds the flicker of hope that he had harboured for three long years get smothered.

Like any other common man, initially, Julien sees no other option but to accept the court’s verdict. But when news reaches that Lisa had attempted to commit suicide, he decides to take matters in his own hands and attempt the apparently impossible— snatch his wife from the clutches of law.

At this juncture, one would expect the evolution of an individual into a hero, armed with an outrageous plan and an arsenal at his disposal to boot. But Cavayé’s (he co-wrote the screenplay) protagonist is anything but an action hero. He is the quintessential ‘average man’, who, when facing extraordinary odds does not perform a volte-face character-wise, but reacts the way any other man-on-the-street would. And in this he is helped by Henri Pasquet (portrayed by Olivier Marchal, director of the superlative films policier of 2004, 36 Quai des Orfèvres)—an ex-convict who had escaped from prison as many as seven times, and is now the author of a bestselling book My Life on the Run.

While laying down the ground rules of engineering an escape from prison, Pasquet underlines the basic tenet: ‘Escaping is easy. The hard part is staying free’. He also warns Julien that those who do succeed in the attempt are born criminals. Since there is no chance of improvisation, others, like Julien himself, are advised not to walk that path simply because they will end up getting ‘burned bad’.

In the second act of the film, titled ‘The last three months’, we find that Julien has already progressed so far down the path Pasquet had warned him about that there is no turning back for him. Always distant from his father, he has now grown even more detached not only from him, but also from the other members of his family, including his brother Pascal (Thierry Godard) and even Oscar. His life now has only one focal point—that of trying to devise a plan of his own to get Lisa out of prison. Knowing fully well that he will not be able to share his secret with his pragmatic wife, Julien carries the burden quietly, not succumbing even when Lisa misinterprets his growing aloofness. Meanwhile, little Oscar tries in his own way to reach out to his Dad, by imitating his father’s actions, which mainly involves converting his apartment into an operations room, replete with maps, photos, newspaper clippings, graphs, schedules, and numerous notes. 

‘The last three days’ is the dénouement of Pour Elle when an unforeseen event threatens to jeopardise the plan that Julien had so meticulously drawn up over the past few months. Not only that, a violent act committed by him puts the police hot on his trail, which leads to an edge-of-the-seat climax.

Prison film itself is one of the most clichéd of all film genres. Within its sub-genres, wrongful imprisonment and planning an escape rank quite high. Pour Elle could easily have just been one more entry into this seemingly endless churning of old wine in an old bottle, but for one important difference. It emphasises more on the planner than the ingenuity of the plan itself.

In fact, in hindsight, irrespective of the time and effort that Julien spends on hatching a way to get Lisa out, his plot has nothing innovative in it. And this is exactly where those of us expecting an action-packed ‘rescue mission’ will be sorely disappointed. In all probability, this lack of action, except in the last quarter of an hour of the film, must have been the reason Hollywood decided to remake Pour Elle into The Next Three Days (2010), starring Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks in the lead, and directed by the Academy Award winning director and screenwriter Paul Haggis.

However, if one is not averse to shift focus in a film belonging to a done-to-death genre and ponder more on the psyche of an average-Joe, who wants to right the wrong done to someone he cares for not by transforming himself into a one-man army or masterminding a complex plot; or if one is open to a film where emotions are underplayed, reactions to adversity are subtle and not of the chest-thumping variety, and the protagonist is most of the time clueless of his next move than being a know-it-all—then Pour Elle is pour vous. 

The Penalty, the Profession, and the Pain

In her book Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean, one of the foremost American proponents for the abolition of the death penalty, wrote: ‘Government ... can’t be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.’ But in the 1960s, under the feared dictator Francisco Franco’s regime, capital punishment was very much in vogue in Spain, as we learn from the opening sequence of the acclaimed Spanish director and screenwriter Luis García Berlanga’s criminally underrated and unfairly under-viewed tragicomedy masterpiece El Verdugo (1963) a.k.a. The Executioner a.k.a. Not on Your Life.

As the film begins, a prison guard has his breakfast interrupted with the arrival of a mortician and his assistant, the latter carrying a coffin on his shoulders. Through a second door emerge a handful of government officials, including the counsel of defence, and an aged, affable man, carrying with him a case. He is, the mortician tells his assistant, the eponymous executioner. The duo and the coffin now enter through the same door, only to re-emerge a moment later. Only this time, they are holding the casket up at both ends, indicating there is a body inside. Thus, subtly, the spectre of death enters the frame, and will hover around the main characters throughout the film. However, like the morbid act of the execution itself, it will never really come out in the open.

The elderly, genteel executioner is Amadeo (played brilliantly by the renowned Spanish actor José Isbert). As the mortician’s assistant, José Luis (portrayed by the Italian actor Nino Manfredi) tells his boss, ‘…he looks like a normal person’, the first of the many wrong impressions that we harbour about an executioner gets snuffed out.  A veteran of forty years in the gruesome profession of garroting, Amadeo has a long time ago come to terms with the reality that ‘executioners are misunderstood people’. That is why, he does not take it as an affront when the prison guard looks distastefully at his case containing the tools of his trade that he had mistakenly placed on the same desk where the guard was having his breakfast. Nor is he shaken by the obvious irritation his innocuous query about when the first streetcar arrives is met with.

A chance visit to Amadeo’s residence reveals to José Luis that he is not really popular among his neighbours, either, who consider themselves ‘respectable people’. But when the young undertaker meets Amadeo’s spinster daughter Carmen (Emma Penella), something starts brewing between the two hearts, and it is not just the coffee that Carmen dutifully offers him.

As the two start coming closer, they find that they share something in common. Carmen confides to José Luis that all her fiancés have run away the moment they had learnt that she was an executioner’s daughter. José Luis tells her in return that every girl has left him when they had realised that he earns his bread by working as an undertaker. While death parts other couples, in this particular case, it brought two hearts together.

Coaxed by his boss, who is also Amadeo’ friend, and browbeaten by being unfortunately caught in bed with Carmen when Amadeo had barged into the house unannounced, the unassuming undertaker has no other option but to abandon his dream of going to Germany and become a mechanic, and get married to Carmen, instead. But surely, there is no place in his own house for his new bride, which is already bursting at its seams as a result of the presence of José Luis’s younger brother Antonio (curiously played by an actor named José Luis López Vázquez)—a tailor by profession—his shrewish wife, and their two children. Moreover, on the day of the wedding, disgusted that his brother had taken an executioner’s daughter as a bride, Antonio had proclaimed that he would be parting ways with his elder brother.

But good news arrives in the form of a missive that declares that in recognition of his four-decade-long service, Amadeo has been granted a three-bedroom flat. However, as fate would have it, the soon-to-be-retired executioner is told that he will lose the flat the moment he is out of work. Hence, the future of the family, which is on the verge of welcoming a new addition, seems to hang on whether an individual, who is an expert at interring, can now become equally proficient at garroting.

The very idea of earning his livelihood by taking someone’s life is unimaginable to José Luis. But his feeble protests stand no chance while facing the incessant haranguing of his father-in-law, who keeps insisting that he take the job and make the flat theirs simply because ‘…they sentence people, but, in the last moment, they're going to pardon them!’ Begrudgingly, the undertaker, who has always believed that ‘People should die in their own beds’ accedes to Amadeo’s request, while dreading the day when he will be called to ‘work’. To his utter dismay, his fear soon becomes reality, when he is summoned to Mallorca to execute a condemned convict.

A close scrutiny of all timeless comedies will reveal a common thread. If one scratches their funny, frothy façade, one will invariably find pain and pathos running deep. Berlanga’s El Verdugo is no exception.

The film is full of both wry, satiric humour as well as laugh-out-loud moments. Take for example, the scene when José Luis visits Amadeo’s house for the first time. On the wall, he spies a framed photograph. Noticing his gaze, a nonchalant Amadeo tells the young undertaker that it is one of his ‘clients’, and then goes on to show him the wristwatch that the man had gifted the executioner. A horrified José Luis now turns his attention to another wall, this time adorned with more than one portraits. Pre-empting the unasked query, the aged man replies, in an equally casual manner: ‘No, those are just my relatives!’ Or the scene when Carmen wants to buy a new shirt for José Luis., and Amadeo takes one look at his son-in-law’s neck to announce: ‘It’s a size forty-one!’

While peppering his film with such smile-inducing moments (the wedding scene is uproariously funny), maestro Berlanga and his frequent collaborator, co-writer Rafael Azcona, have not, for a moment, allowed the subliminal anti-capital punishment message of their film to get diluted. By condemning the duplicity of governments that proclaim they want to protect the lives of citizens, and at the same time sentence them to their deaths, Berlanga and Azcona state their message aloud through Amadeo, when he suddenly grasps the hand of his would-be son-in-law and brings it near a lamp socket to say: ‘ That is only 250 volts! They make me laugh when they say public garroting is inhuman. Is the guillotine better then? Do you think it’s fair to bury a man in pieces?....The Americans they use the electric chair, which leaves them carbonised, scorched’.

The director-screenwriter duo also delivers the same message subtly, in the unforgettable penultimate sequence of the film, by raising the all-important question: Who really dies and who gets killed at the garrote, gallows or guillotine?

Single-shot Scare Show

‘Cabin in the woods’ is a horror sub-genre that has been covered in debut feature films by directors like Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, 1981), who went on to helm the three Spiderman films; and Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, 2002), who gained notoriety with his ‘torture porn’ duology, Hostel (2005) and Hostel II (2007). The recent entry into this field comes from a country better known for its soccer than scary cinema—Uruguay.

Like his illustrious predecessors, first-time director Gustavo Hernández’s La Casa Muda (2010), or The Silent House, while playing within the rules of the sub-genre, still manages to carve a niche for itself. On one hand, while Hernández has succumbed to a time-tested marketing ploy, namely, the ‘Based on true events’ gambit—used to varying degrees of success by films ranging from The Amityville Horror (1979 and 2005) to The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)—on the other, he has displayed an innate confidence in himself by adopting a format that is as rare as ‘true story’-based horror films are a dime a dozen.

What we are referring to here is the single-take, single-shot film that takes place in real time—the first example of which dates back to 1948. In that year, Alfred Hitchcock introduced the long-take approach to filmmaking in Rope (interestingly, Rope was also based on a real-life event—the Leopold-Loeb case), with mixed results. Purists will point out that Rope was not really a film with a single continuous shot, and they are right to do so. Hindered by the technology of the time, which only allowed film rolls that could shoot for a maximum of ten minutes, Hitchcock masterfully masked the cuts and other edits simply by blocking the screen (having a character walk in front of the camera, for example). Developments in camera and storing devices have now made the single-shot film more of a possibility, as can be seen in Mike Figgis’ experimental Timecode (2000), Aleksandr Sokurov’s awe-inspiring Russian Ark (2002), and Spiros Stathoulopoulos’ gritty PVC-1 (2007).

While the technique adopted by Hernández is novel, the same, unfortunately, cannot be said of the tale he tells (the screenplay was penned by Oscar Estévez based on a story by Hernández himself). The plot, based on an unsolved incident that occurred in a small village in Uruguay in the 1940s, unfolds with a young woman, Laura (Florencia Colucci) arriving at a dilapidated double-storied farmhouse with her father, Wilson (Gustavo Alonso). Néstor (Abel Tripaldi), the owner of the house, who is acquainted with both father and daughter, have entrusted them with the job of fixing it, so that ‘it looks nicer to prospective buyers’. The inquisitive Laura starts looking around the moment she arrives, only to find that all the windows of the house have been barricaded from the outside—to keep others out or to keep something in, one wonders.

As the father-daughter duo settle down on armchairs to pass the night, knowing that they will have to get up early in the morning if they are to finish refurbishing the house within the next two days, Laura’s curiosity is piqued when loud, heart-thumping noises are heard from the first floor. As her father goes up to investigate, Laura is left behind, armed only with a scythe and a lantern at her disposal (the electricity connection had long been cut off). And so she shall be, alone and afraid for almost the entire runtime of the film.

A temptation for the filmmaker must have been to go the ‘point-of-view’ way, as seen in other horror flicks like The Blair Witch Project (1999), REC (2007), Paranormal Activity (2007) and Paranormal Activity 2 (2010). But, Pedro Luque, the cinematographer of La Casa Muda, instead of allowing the camera to become Laura’s perpetual eyes, gradually shifts perspective, and makes it an accompaniment, instead, as she delves deeper and deeper into the bowels of the house in her desperate bid to get out. Moreover, unlike most other films of the genre, here, the protagonist behaves in a rational manner once she finds herself in mortal peril. She keeps looking for the house keys, tries the phone, and even barricades a door. That is why, when she breaks down and keeps sobbing and whimpering, we empathise with her predicament. 

Hernández succeeds in gradually upping the ante as far as the creepiness of the atmosphere is concerned by resorting to some well-established norms in horror that most of his renowned counterparts tend to shun. Majority of the film is without any dialogue or even monologue because the only character on screen is Laura. When sounds do occur, other than the loud thumps, like those made by the clinking of a can or an ominous child’s rattle, they add to the overall sense of claustrophobia and disorientation. Mention must also be made of the eerie score by Hernán González that is far more effective than cheap ‘jump scare’ and ‘boo’ tactics.

However, La Casa Muda is not without its flaws. Certain parts of it remind us of films as varied as the Thai spook fest Shutter (2004), the French-Romanian home invasion flick Ils (2006), and even Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). Then, there is the obvious gripe as to why a self-professed ‘real time’ film should have an editor (Hernández himself) credited. The biggest issue has to be the film’s conclusion that raises more queries about what preceded it than provides an answer to. There is a post-credit sequence, as well, but it appears more as a tagged-on device to attain the duration requisite of a feature-length film than serving as any value addition.

Having said that, La Casa Muda is still a commendable effort, which should not be adjudged based on the fact that even though most of the film-going fraternity is still to watch the original, Hollywood has already bastardised it in the form of a remake that has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; but on the basis of the point that on a miniscule budget of $6,000 a greenhorn director had decided to try his hand at something that can be a daunting task for even the most accomplished of filmmakers. 

Bullets, Brotherhood, and Bonhomie

 On the eve of the Chinese government's taking over the reins of the former Portuguese colony of Macau, the island’s residents are going through a tumultuous time. Those who are rich and powerful are leaving Macau at the first occasion that arises; while those who are staying back are suspicious and antagonistic towards people from Hong Kong, who are labeled as ‘outsiders’. And with the onset of the new regime imminent, the triad (the myriad Chinese criminal organisations) takes this opportunity to settle some old scores once and for all.

It is to extract revenge that in the Hong Kong-based director Johnnie To’s Exiled (2006), mob boss Fay (Simon Yam of 2008’s Ip Man and 2010’s Ip Man 2 fame) sends two of his henchmen, Blaze (played by Anthony Wong, who shot to fame with the Infernal Affairs trilogy, on which Martin Scorsese’s Oscar winner The Departed was based) and Fat (Suet Lam) to take out a renegade gangster Wo (portrayed by Nick Cheung, who also acted in To’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful 2005 film Election and its sequel Triad Election that was released a year later).

The reason behind Boss Fay’s wrath was a foiled assassination attempt on him that was masterminded by Wo three years ago. Since then, Wo has been on the run, and has only recently returned after turning over a new leaf—forsaking the path of violence and opting for the family way instead. The news of Wo’s return has also reached Tai (Francis Ng, from Infernal Affairs II), who also arrives at his former gang mate’s doorstep alongside Cat (Roy Cheung). Since the botched assassination attempt on Boss Fay was as much Wo’s idea as it was Tai’s—but Wo ‘took the rap’ for it—Tai now considers it his duty to protect Wo, his wife Jin (Josie Ho) and their one-month old son. Very subtly, To tells the viewer that the two groups are at loggerheads with each other—Tai knocks with his left hand, while Blaze uses his right.

This opening sequence of Exiled, when the two duo—Blaze and Fat, and Tai and Cat—knock on Wo’s door asking for him, bears an uncanny resemblance to the bravura opening sequence of Sergio Leone’s magnum opus Once upon a time in the West (1968). There, too, a gang (of three) lay in wait at a decrepit railway station for someone they were sent to kill. However, the stylised, choreographed, and visually sumptuous Mexican stand off that follows, once Wo returns to his apartment in a van carrying furniture, is pure ‘noodle’ rather than ‘spaghetti’.

A former gang member mending his ways is hardly a novel concept in mob-based crime dramas. Nor is fate’s intervention preventing him from doing just that. However, by ushering in a divide among the same gang on the question of eliminating an exiled member, To gives a new spin to an old yarn. After all, not many films can boast of scenes where after a shootout, those who pulled the trigger are seen replacing shattered mirrors, mending broken doors, and helping their ‘target’ in moving furniture, before settling down to have dinner together. It is then, with the help of a faded out photograph we get to know that Wo, Tai, Fat, Blaze, and Cat had not only been in Boss Fay’s gang together, but had also grown up together. As events unfold, Wo’s future becomes inextricably linked with whether or not the five friends succeed in pulling off a heist involving an armoured car carrying a ton of gold.

Knowing fully well that friends who have spent a major portion of their lives together say as much with their silence as with their speech, To does not make the characters speak about themselves, nor does he delve into a back story for any of the five characters. Instead, living up to his reputation of being a director who sifts through genres in his movies in a ‘chameleonic’ manner, To laces Exiled with a generous dose of darkly comic sequences. So, we have street-smart gangsters arguing among themselves regarding how many kilos make a ton; haggling with a surgeon in an underground clinic over the fees for an operation when one of the gang members gets shot; four fully-grown gangsters turning tail in an instant when a woman points a gun at them; giving up the idea of ganging up on a gold-carrying vehicle simply because a flipped coin landed on the wrong side; Boss Fay and the five ‘traitors’ arriving at the same location for medical treatment; spitting up a bullet that got lodged inside a vessel, while drinking from it; asking for driving directions from compatriots who are equally clueless; a guard getting help from unexpected quarters during a raid on his vehicle—the instances are many.

Hong Kong’s official submission in the Best Foreign Language Film Category at the 80^th Annual Academy Awards, Exiled as a Johnnie To vehicle might not be as satisfying as some of his earlier films like Running out of Time (1999), PTU (2003) and the aforementioned Election and Triad Election; or the offerings that he followed up with such as Mad Detective (2007) and Vengeance (2009), but it still is a spectacularly shot film with a rich palette and a memorable score. Even though the film will, possibly, never make it to the top five list drawn up by any To aficionado, but the very fact that a trick with a soft-drink can in the introductory sequence of the Ajith starrer Billa (2007) was ‘inspired’ by the last sequence of Exiled, just goes to show that certain aspects of even not-so-good films by this prolific director are good enough for members of his ilk residing in another part of the globe.