Les Egares starts with a plane straffing a narrow road filled with civilian refugees from the German march on Paris. Cars explode and people die trapped on the road as it runs through an open area. When I first saw this scene, it made an indelible impression on me, one so strong I was sure I wouldn’t forget it. That was several years ago when I saw it in Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games, and I recognized it instantly in Les Egares.I don’t think this opening in Les Egares is a gratuitous reference either, any more than both films having a brother and sister or the sister having the same hair style in them. The two films address the same idea of nature being both innocent and savage. In Forbidden Games, the kids innocently mimic rituals of death and try to understand and take care of their lost pets or other animals; it’s a creepy behavior. In Les Egares, Yves is a force of nature who climbs walls with agility and is one with the forest; he also robs the dead as need arises and seems dangerously blunt and abrupt. Nature has its rough edges in both these films, oddly sweet but nevertheless disturbing.
Les Eagares also adds in the Techine mother I've seen in so many films. She’s controlling, imposing order and social conformity, but she grows in this film, drawn by the power of nature to the culminating sexual encounter near the end. In a special feature interview on the DVD I watched, Techine says he wasn't sure whether to include this scene, but I'm glad it's here; the almost animal quality of outdoor encounter is an important indication of movement on the mother's evolution towards being a more natural, real being.
All this notwithstanding, Les egares isn’t one of my favorite Techine films. For one thing, the movie lacks the inclusive range that I usually like in his movies. We’re very focused on Yves and Odile throughout Les egares, and although the two leads are complicated in their own right, we don’t get the surplus insight into the other characters that I’ve grown to like in good Techine films. I want -- and take great pleasure in -- the excess that this generous director gives me, and there's not enough of it here. Also, Les egares has a somewhat classic plot structure that I found less engaging than the plot in much of his other work; Les egares starts and ends with the same characters in a classsic aristotelian structure instead of introducting me to interesting and important characters along the way and then dropping them just as readily.
I also found this movie to lack technical innovation. There is often flashy camera work or editing to make a Techine film a little more engaging, but aside from the Kurasawa-like tracking shots, there’s not much I haven’t seen elsewhere.
And I’ll add that I thought the end was hackneyed. Guess what Nature-Boy Yves does when he’s confined to a civilized prison..... (and if that's a hard guess, there's some pretty direct forshadowing)
I’d say the film is worthwhile, mostly for the complexity of the characters of Yves and Odile and the ideas they embody. Otherwise, there is so much obviousness and clunkiness that I wonder if Technine wasn't going for something I didn't get. In any case, I wasn’t particularly surprised or touched by anything here.
No comments:
Post a Comment