I STAND ALONE (SEUL CONTRE TOUS)
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Celluloid Dreams Director: Gaspar Noe Writer: Gaspar Noe Cast: Philippe Hahon, Frankye Pain, Blandine Lenoir, Martine Audrain
A cartoon in the New Yorker magazine some years ago features a young American tourist staring up at a disbelieving guide and insisting, "But I don't want to see the REAL Paris; I want to see the TOURIST's Paris." Who can blame her? If writer-director Gaspar Noe's image of working-class areas of Paris and a part of the French countryside in 1980 are any intimation, this is not the country glorified by Jacques Demy where most of the women resemble Catherine Deneuve. This is down-and-dirty terrain, and Noe portrays its uncompromisingly bleak topography populated by denizens who'd be more at home in the digs of Gorky's stories than in Maxim's. Taking a clue from Jean-Luc Godard with a nod toward Bert Brecht, Noe films his drama of devastation with screen-covering signposts advising viewers what is to come or ironically pontificating with fortune-cookie slogans like "Man is Moral." In one of his signposts that leave us wondering whether to chuckle or bolt, he jackets the screen with the admonition, "You have ten seconds to leave the screening of this movie." In case anyone out there has the temerity to close his eyes rather than look at the nihilistic violence, degradation and utter degeneration portrayed in this hell-raising venture, Noe rouses him with a bang, a noise not unlike the sound of an automatic weapon.
"I Stand Alone," which could more literally be entitled "One Against All" from the French title "Seul Contre Tous," is narrated by a bankrupt, unemployed butcher who has nothing to his name after thirty-five years of grinding up the horsemeat loved by some in French society. Himself abandoned as an infant, he has an autistic daughter whom he has given up to an institution, a fat pregnant mistress whom he hates, and a despised mother-in-law who lives with them in a tenement somewhere in the sticks of Lille. The man is virtually franc-less and so self-destructive that he even loses a chance to work as a deli man in a supermarket because he is literally unable to smile.
While there is some dialogue as the 50-year-old butcher talks with his mistress, two prospective employers, some people in a bar and eventually his attractive but mentally challenged daughter, much of the action takes place in the man's head as he turns from a reasonably decent person to an increasingly obsessed and violent beast. Noe does not bother to inquire how this lumpen creature became almost preternaturally frenzied, nor do we need to know much more than the reality of his unhappy upbringing. We'll have to accept the man as a representation of what any of us could be capable of, though few in the audience could picture themselves even punching their wives' or girl friends' fetuses to death in a fit of rage.
His father is said to have been a Communist and the butcher possesses a view of France that runs the gamut from Marxism to Fascism without a detour on the way. He is not political in the intellectual sense of the word but has visceral inclinations against people in his country who he feels do not belong there and against the powerful rich whom he judges to be all "queer." He parrots slogans that he may have picked up on TV such as the concept that the law exists simply to protect the rich and should be ignored by the masses.
Ideas aside, "Seul Contre Tous" is acted with passion by Philipe Nahon, whose unsmiling countenance and fiery surveillance of his limited world reflect a torment leading rapidly into schizophrenia. The film--which includes hard-core pornography, and an intensely violent close-up of a woman spurting blood from the neck as she lay bleeding to death of a gunshot wound--virtually clobbers the viewers with a vista of a France so infected with racism, unemployment and physical deterioration that it looks like a Gallic post- Armageddon cosmos. Unlike the Italo-Turkish film"Hamam"-- an optimistic picture which maintains that you can indeed start out anew by changing your environment--"I Stand Alone" stands as one of the bleakest, most nihilistic portraits of debasement, decline and deterioration in memory. While some may say, "What's the point?" Gaspar Noe deserves acclaim for furnishing us with an original piece of cinema worthy of attention for its sheer audacity.
Not Rated. Running Time: 92 minutes. (C) 1998 Harvey Karten
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