Review by Tristan Bishop
Simon Killer is not the film I thought it would be. The UK poster, with eye imagery recalling Argento’s Four Flies On Grey Velvet and the heyday of Italian giallo cinema, had me expecting some kind of retro head trip along the lines of Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s stunning Amer (2009). The title Simon Killer also seems on first inspection to promise something a little tongue-in-cheek perhaps, hence I was all geared up for some savage, stylish and maybe slightly campy fun. As it happens I was wrong footed entirely – Simon Killer is not a particularly violent film (although it is sometimes not that easy a watch), nor is it a barrel of laughs. What it does have is style though, and excels in telling a simple story in a way that engages and makes you ask questions.
Simon (Brady Corbet, star of such art house hits as Melancholia, Funny Games and er, Thunderbirds) is a young American in Paris, staying at the house of the son of a family friend. He has recently graduated and has been through a presumably messy and unpleasant break-up. At first he wanders lonely through the city, composing letters to his ex-girlfriend in his mind, embellishing the stories to make out that he is meeting lots of people and having a great time. Eventually his loneliness drives him to a brothel where he strikes up a relationship with Victoria (Mati Diop), one of the girls working there. However it soon becomes clear that Simon is both very needy and a compulsive liar. After an evening doing coke they hatch a plan to extort money from Victoria’s clients, but will they live a happier life or will Simon’s personality disorders derail their plans?
I will admit to not having seen director Antonio Campo’s first film, Afterschool (2008) – which sounds like an even more bleak affair than Simon Killer – but on the strength of this I am going to have to track it down, as Campo very much impresses with his sophomore effort. The film is generally fairly low-key and the story unfolds slowly, but the viewer is dragged in and involved by the events – Campo displays a lot of verve in his direction, with jarring edits, strobing effects and filming choices (such as an important scene being filmed from across a busy road) being used sparingly but effectively. The score is always very impressive; original music by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans mixed with snippets of (occasionally repeated) quirky indie pop, and serves to add real texture and tension to the proceedings. The aces in the pack, however, are the stunning and believable performances from Corbet and Diop, both of whom are convincing as damaged people. Corbet’s portrayal of mental illness is especially disturbing, and when his slippery constructs of lies start to fall apart we see occasional glimpses of rage and pain that make us fear for the fate of whoever has the bad fortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Watching Simon Killer I was reminded of two other films I have seen in recent months – Berberian Sound Studio and Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video. Here we have a mixture of the fish-out-of-water dislocation of Berberian (like that film, only half the dialogue is in English, although here the rest is always subtitled) mixed with Haneke’s very uneasy close-up look at the day to day life of an extremely disturbed young man. Simon Killer is not quite as extreme in its effect as either of these films, but it manages to be very effective at making us identify with a main character who is volatile (and who is very obviously an unreliable narrator) by placing him in a ‘stranger in a strange land’ kind of situation. The film also does very subtle work in constructing a background for Simon which makes us warm to him somewhat (even if we are never entirely sure if it is the truth), which only adds to the sense of creeping dread that Simon’s gradual unravelling (and, let’s face it, the title of the film itself) lead us to.
Having digested and reflected on the film it turns out that the poster art is actually pretty accurate – Simon tells people he studied eyes at college – and in particular the relationship between the eye and the brain, which is a subtle theme throughout the film, not only hinting at Simon’s own talents for manipulation and emotional sleight-of-hand, but also a comment on the nature of film-making itself. As for the title? Well, you’ll just have to see for yourself.
Simon Killer is released to UK cinemas on 12th April, before coming to DVD and Blu-ray on 24th June, from Eureka.