What do you think she meant when she said “a huge black monster with giant claws”?
Or, How To Get Ahead in Forensic Medicine. Somewhat darker and less manic than Arnaud Desplechin’s later work, his debut feature La Sentinelle tells the story of Mathias, a French medical student who unwittingly comes into possession of a mummified human head, which he feels compelled to analyze in order to determine its identity. At the same time as it works out this intriguing premise, the film proceeds on the model of the classical Bildungsroman, following a young provincial as he pursues love and friendship in the big city. And, somewhere in there, there’s room for social satire and meditations on the passing of Soviet Communism. While I fully believe Desplechin could unite these disparate elements today in one of his seven-layer-cake narrative constructions like Kings and Queen or A Christmas Tale, in La Sentinelle he’s committed to a more languid, minimalist style that, while alluring in itself, works against the filmmaker’s synthetic ambition. Much of the ample running time is taken up with the relations between Mathias’ circle of friends, all of whom are wealthy scions of diplomats or other pillars of French society, and their anxieties about living up to these legacies are a central theme; at times it suggests a Gallic Metropolitan, with a similar potential annoyance factor. But if Desplechin hasn’t quite found his storytelling style yet, he already shows a great touch with actors: Emmanuel Salinger as Mathias, Jean-Louis Richard as a suspicious customs agent, and future Desplechin regular Emmanuelle Devos are all superb.
by Evan Kindley | Source: 35mm print
10 Nov 2008 6:11 PM | Submit Comment