la nuit du 12 (w&d dominik moll, w. pauline guéna, gilles marchand)

Moll’s film, the second of his I have seen this year at Cinemateca, opens with an act of psychopathic brutality. For a while it feels as though the film is staggering in the wake of this action. Where can it go from here? Particularly as it is clear Moll doesn’t want to do anything gratuitous. He wants to pay homage to the victim, re-vindicating the murder mystery as a means to explore the psychic damage that is inflicted by a violent action. As such, the figure of the police chief, Yohan Ives, emerges as the protagonist. Yohan is part of a male-dominated world that has no option but to treat violent crimes as part and parcel of their daily lives, something which contributes to an inevitably sardonic, macho culture. Yohan, played with a delicate subtlety by Bastien Bouillon, has natural leadership qualities, but he is also a gentle soul. HIs failure to resolve the crime nags away at him, representing not only everything that is flawed about the job, but also a world ridden with gender wars and violence. Moll handles the material with restraint and tact. It feels, to an extent, as though this perhaps restricts his filmmaker’s flair, but it permits him to succeed in converting a story which perhaps shouldn’t work, shifting the focus of the crime from the victim to the policeman, but in the end sort of does. The film traces Yohan’s journey towards a reconciliation with the flawed world he inhabits, even if it is a world without mercy or justice. 

seules les bêtes (w&d dominik moll, w. giles marchand, colin niel)

Moll is  not a particularly prolific director. I saw two of his early films, Lemming and Harry He’s Here to Help, about twenty years ago. Since then he has only made four films, two of which I have seen. The early work had an engaging approach to narrative, mixing up Hitchkockian tension with a surreal twist, which was right up my street. One suspects the starry Monk (2011) was not a great success, which might explain the subsequent slowdown. However, he has kept on going, and in the same week that my co-writer went to see his last film, (The Night of the Twelfth) I caught his penultimate, Seules Les Bêtes. This is a portfolio film, telling elements of the same story from five different points of view, with the tales overlapping and the timeline jumping around. Mostly set in the rural France, it also manages to include a sequence set in the Ivory Coast, marking it out as a film that tackles the smallness of our big world, where chance encounters are ever more likely and capable of disrupting the apparent tranquility of even an isolated community. The very final twist is perhaps a leap too far, but the film on the whole succeeds in managing its disparate elements with real aplomb. The characterisation is straightforward but effective. It’s a film that is driven by (human) all too human instincts of its varied cast, their motives fuelled by desire for love, money or lust, and in this sense its intentions to represent the things we have in common the world over is beautifully realised. Moll remains one of the finest directors around, and it’s great to see that his career would appear to be picking up pace after the mid-term blues.  

news from planet mars (w&d dominik moll, w gilles marchand)

How we loved Lemming. Not to mention Harry He’s Here to Help. I think they’re some of my favourite movies from around the turn of the century. Deadpan humour, a sardonic, Hitchcokian slant. Moll was one of the most important filmmakers around, one whose decidedly European sensibility (should there be such a thing) managed to get a foothold in British cinemas. And then, nada, for over a decade. In fact, I note from IMDB that he made The Monk in 2011, a film which passed me by. From time to time, I would wonder, whatever happened to Dominik Moll? So when, casually browsing the Cinemateca webpage, I saw a new Moll film, it was too good an opportunity to miss. 

News From Planet Mars, to give it its English title, is a likeable, if somewhat predictable tale of a downtrodden man who has to turn his life around. Philippe Mars lives in his high rise Paris flat, separated from his TV presenter wife. The film catches up with him whilst she’s on location in Brussels, covering a Euro summit, meaning he has their two teenage the kids for an indeterminate time. His kids think he’s a loser. And it looks as though they’re right. His ear is accidentally severed by a psychopathic work colleague. He survives, as does his ear, but the colleague ends up moving into his flat, and then bringing his equally disturbed would-be girlfriend too. Everything that can go wrong for Phillipe does. But finally he turns the corner, regains his kids’ respect and realises he has to quit his dead-end job. It’s all a bit neat and tame. There are a few touches reminiscent of prime Moll: animals on the loose; the ear incident; the sudden disposal of his sister’s dog, but these are garnishes. 

Whilst it’s good to have Moll back, the edginess of his earlier work doesn’t shine through here. Looking back, it feels as though Europe has become a far less stable place in the last ten years. The uneasiness which underpins Moll’s best work feels prophetic of a society where you can no longer take things for granted, where the carpet is moving under you. Perhaps modernity has caught up with Dominik Moll and it’s left him uncertain where to go next. Like the rest of us.