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CHAOS |
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Director:
Coline Serreau
Screenplay: Coline Serreau
Cast: Hélène: Catherine Frot
Paul: Vincent Lindon
Noémie/Malika: Rachida Brakni
Mamie: Line Renaud
Fabrice: Aurélien Wiik
Awards: Most Promising Young Actress (Brakni), César Awards
(2002).
Running time: 109 minutes
Production: France, 2001
Rating: Not rated (violence, sexual situations)
Gauge: 16 & 35mm, DVD (color)
Language: French
Distributor: New Yorker Films
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"A
breathlessly involving tale of urban indifference, rampant hypocrisy
and the difference a little human decency can make, superbly played
pic is a black comedy that’s frequently funny but never frivolous
as it takes a merciless but instructive look at French society here
and now." Lisa Nesselson, Variety. |
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On their way
to a dinner party, Parisian couple Paul and Hélène
are stopped by a woman running frantically toward their car, screaming,
“Let me in!” Paul locks the doors. A group of men in hot
pursuit beat her unconscious and leave her for dead. Hélène
wants to call the police, but Paul won’t get involved. He drives
to a car wash to have the blood-splattered vehicle cleaned. The
next day Hélène traces the woman, Noémie, to
a hospital where she lies in a coma, and takes up residence by her
bedside, helping with her rehabilitation and protecting her from
the thugs who want to kill her. Upon her recovery, Noémie
recounts (in a film-within-a-film) her life story: how she was brought
from Algeria by her father, who sold her at sixteen to an older
man, and how she escaped only to be enslaved by a pimp and forced
to work the streets. Together the two women plot a merciless revenge.
Serreau (Three Men and a Cradle) has made a film blazing
with indignation at the mistreatment of women, whether in the name
of tradition or at the hands of “post-feminist” society.
Furiously-paced, funny and, as the story’s outcome begins to
look rosier, increasingly fantastic, the film strips away the gloss
of civilized society, joyfully revealing the violence at its hypocritical
core.
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| PHOTO New
Yorker Films |
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