Now this is a first feature. The Woman With Leopard Shoes is a striking and economical piece of film, taking some elements of noir (though not as many as I was expecting, frankly) and skirting close to gothic horror in places, but all in all, offering up a crime thriller which makes good use of its running time. The film starts in total darkness, with a would-be burglar (Paul Bruchon) taking a job from a mysterious female, who instructs him on where to find a specific object – a box – in a remote house. His task is to retrieve it, and bring it to her. He agrees to the job, and arrives at the house as agreed. It’s all going well until, shortly after he breaks in, a whole crowd of people arrive at the property, a property which he understood to be empty; he has to quickly conceal himself in a simple enough, but genuinely tense sequence of events.
Our nameless burglar now has to try and navigate his way through this situation without being detected. There is no high action here, rather the film becomes an innovative little problem-solver, with the man having to use whatever information he can – letters, memos, postcards – to work out who is responsible for his predicament. No one is who they seem to be here; he begins to send and receive text messages, ostensibly with the person who hired him, but he needs to shift the power balance somehow as he is reliant on their better natures – whilst not being sure they even have one. However, a chance discovery alerts him to the fact that there is apparently far more to this situation that simply retrieving a box. It’s more important now that he does what he can to get out of this situation.
The struggle for information and knowledge underpins this film and keeps it nicely interesting, doling out its plot developments very effectively. Whilst this is a black and white film, and it does make use of some film noir visual touches, it emphasises the importance of technology in a way which marks it apart from noir, as much of the film’s developments come via text messages. There is almost no dialogue here whatsoever, and we spend the bulk of the film with our lone protagonist: other people are more often than not reduced to what the protagonist sees of them from whichever piece of furniture he’s currently hiding under – usually, it’s their feet only. All of this is a big gamble – refracting a storyline through a succession of body parts could have come across as terribly alienating – but it works very well. The back story comes together neatly, and we are not patronised. The use of English (all the texts are written in English) is somewhat more expedient than fully plausible, granted, but it’s a minor quibble overall.
With an incredibly small set and a voiceless central character with whom we spend nearly every available second, The Woman With Leopard Shoes achieves a great deal; it could all have floundered but it holds together very well. My heart often sinks when I see the same name down as director, writer, editor and so on, but it’s a baseless concern here: Alexis Bruchon has put together a well-paced, engaging and clever film.