Review by Keri O’Shea.
Sex. Cannibalism. Sex and cannibalism. You might be forgiven for thinking that it would be completely impossible to make a boring film which contained both of those themes, but somehow, it has been done twice in France! In 2001 Claire Denis made Trouble Every Day, where even the entrancing Béatrice Dalle couldn’t save the plot from being piecemeal and poorly-paced. Now we have Cannibal, and even making allowances for this being a début feature from writer-director Benjamin Viré, it is notable mainly for managing to be even more dull than Trouble Every Day. I’ll say it again – I’m talking about two films rendering blood and sex combined utterly tiresome. It’s an achievement of sorts, I suppose…
The plot is thus: troubled young golfer Max (Nicolas Gob) – who’d be less troubled and more of a golfer if he didn’t try to play in the woods, perhaps – finds a bloodied young woman lying unconscious. He takes her home, cleans her up, and decides she can stay, christening her Bianca. Inevitably, this isolated man begins to fall for Bianca; the attraction is undimmed even when he follows her into the woods one night and sees her partially devouring a man she’s having sex with. Hey, needs must and all that. As you might imagine, though, Bianca is known to a few people, and they are looking for her. To defend his peckish lady-friend, Max has to confront some demons from his past…
Cannibal suffers almost immediately by trying to surpass all of the usual things an audience might depend on to engage with a story; characterisation is treated very minimally, there is little dialogue (until the end, when there’s too much) and the early scenes of the film lack any real attempt to develop a focus. There’s lots of real time camera work at the start, and as such, little editing and the inclusion of a lot of unnecessary footage. It doesn’t exactly give you a burning interest in Max and even the discovery of Bianca – which has potential as a scene – is handled in the same stumbling, pace-free way. We are then faced with lots of people looking wistfully into the middle distance, asking one another “Ça va?” and slowly eating meals. It isn’t beneficial to furthering the plot and it actively disengaged me from the film, even at this early stage. Furthermore, the style of shooting (hand held cameras, a washed-out, pinkish caste, lots of darkness) made it technically difficult to see what was going on: again, an early scene featuring Bianca had the capacity to shock, but I struggled to see it. I got the distinct impression of a director trying to run before he can crawl; if you want to dispose of all the usual elements which make up a movie, I think you need an awareness of how important they are and evidence that you can craft something remarkable which doesn’t need them. If you can’t do that, then your film will fail.
From here, there’s lots more domestic detail and, what I assume, is time given to establishing the relationship between the two main players. Personally, I was so beaten back by the film by the thirty-minute mark that I had trouble accepting the genuineness of any love between Max and Bianca; again, there is just too much filler, which dilutes any sense of development or narrative progression. By the time the film changed tack and added in crime drama elements – replete with acres of tiresome platitudes about ‘respect’ and so on – I felt baffled. The main issue is that you never find yourself believing that any of the characters here have any sort of internal life: they just drift along for far too long, and then that’s that.
So, there we have it. A promising idea scuppered, because the director preferred to fart around with unconventional camera work (and so on) than develop it properly. The slick packaging and blurb might convince you to give this a go; just remember, it’s all there to tease you.
Cannibal is out now on Region 2 DVD from Matchbox Films.