Les Saignantes
Future-Schmuture
Posted by: ThirteenDamnDollars, September 12, 2005 08:28 PM
Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Sunday September 11th, 4:00PM
Cumberland
Accorting to the press release, there were 3545 films submitted to the TIFF this year, about 1/10th of them were accepted. So when I don't like a movie, I tend to think it's something in me. Some cultural bias, or a failure of my astehic sense or the film was just not to my taste.
This is not the case with Les Saignates. The film starts with a marginally interesting premise for a satirical science fiction social commentary (an important government minister dies while with a prostitute, there are political power plays made by an ambitious younger minister, the prostitutes use the situation to expose the corruption of government and the police), then fails in almost ever respect. This director does not know how to tell a story with pictures. The editing is distracting and terrible, the plot advances in fits and starts, the acting is best left unmentioned, and due to an ill-advised decision to use a cool type-writer style font, even the subtitles are a failure. Have you ever seen a video of LARPers pretending to fight? The fight scenes in Les Saignates are not that good. The director was present, so I tried not to laugh at inappropriate times, but others in the theater were not so courtieous.
I deem this movie unwatchable, if I did not have a perfect record on sticking-it-out, I would have walked out about half way through, a lot of people did.