Change Your Image
karine-3
Reviews
Very Bad Things (1998)
Neither comedy, nor film noir
This movie was much worse than I expected. I usually enjoy the black comedy genre, but I didn't find myself laughing a lot in that one.
The pace of the movie is slow and it takes a long time to get to the core of the plot. The actors are OK, given the not so great material they are given to work with.
But I had this impression all along the movie, that the director hesitated between a black comedy and a film noir and managed to achieve neither. The movie has a few funny moments that would ruin a film noir but unfortunately too few of these funny moments to be a comedy.
As for the movie being unrealistic, sick or lacking morals, well, of course it is but it is supposed to be a fiction... If regular people were doing so much cocaine and booze and chopping dead bodies into pieces like that, well, we would have a problem...
Overall, an over-hyped movie. Maybe Berg should watch again real black comedies, like Fargo and take some notes for his next movie...
Les roseaux sauvages (1994)
Refreshing and subtle
I liked the movie even if I was left with the feeling that there was no real end to it (a common thing in French movies). It was superbly acted by four young comedians perfectly cast. The relations between them are ambiguous. Still, more depth could have been given to their characters and the story.
Nevertheless, there is an overall subtlety to the movie, something that makes it light even if the topics are not always light (Francois discovers he is gay and have some problems dealing with it, Henri is a pied noir in France at the end of the Algeria war and is in a delicate situation, not speaking about Serge who loses his brother to that same war and Maite who is somewhat oppressed by her mother who is a die hard communist militant).
It was very refreshing to see. You need to be familiar with the history of Algeria war and the tensions of that time though to fully follow. A film I would recommend to many people.