Tag: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire

Black Flies

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM CANNES

Veteran paramedic Rutkovsky (Sean Penn) and rookie Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan) have been working together for a few weeks on the streets of New York providing emergency care to the local rogues. The former has been doing the job his entire life, while the latter is a medical student on a temporary placement. They bond in their complicity. This is the job from hell that you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy. One that makes you question the very purpose of life.

It is the aesthetics of hell that prevail throughout the movie. Both the photography and the sound engineering are deeply jarring. Deafening sirens wail without respite. Flies buzz. Bright red lights flash to headache and vomit-inducing results. Patients scream. Blood runs down gaping wounds. People die at resus. People die inside the ambulance. Animals are tortured, killed and even skinned. Think Gaspar Noe minus the sex and you are halfway there. The stuff of nightmares.

Rutkovsky’s and Ollie’s ruthless boss (played by Mike Tyson) often questions their abilities, in a testosterone-fuelled environment with little time for kindness and compassion. There is no sign of a female paramedic and tenderness anywhere. Rutkovsky seems to have little interest in women, his only connection to the other sex being through his ex-wife. who raises their child. “At least he loves his son”, she declares the little appreciation for her former partner. Ollie has a girlfriend but their sexual interaction is barely exciting. The action looks functional and dispassionate. Women have very little significance in this macho film, one unlikely to pass the Bechdel Test.

Black Flies is no celebration for masculinity, however it is no denunciation of its toxicity either. Perhaps it’s intended as some sort of social commentary on the predicament of lower class Americans, but because it provides no contextualisation whatsoever (For example: are these people relegated to such service because they have no health insurance?), it fails miserably at such attempt. It’s a movie that falls into the trappings it set out to criticise. What’s intended as a criticism of the God-like complex (that some paramedics allegedly possess?), instead slips into some tawdry white saviour drama. Rutkovsky and Ollie are intended to represent the epitome of selflessness and compassion. Ollie is Rutkovsky’s mini-me: equally white, handsome, muscular, well-meaning, just much younger. That’s problematic when literally every single one of their patients is a dysfunctional, rude or drug-addicted person-of-colour or a foreigner. Why not throw in a little bit of racism? The wife-beater is Russian, of course (Penn’s most recent doc also instilled with anti-Russian sentiment). Which brings us to the question: do upper- and middle-class white American not use the ambulance service at all? And are all non-whites living in New York deeply troubled, foul-mouthed skunks?

The other problem with Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s latest film is the excessive and redundant violence. The film opens up with a patient with wounds so profound that his blood overflows on the ground and his viscera become exposed. This carnage is continuous throughout the entire film. Adults die in agony, a baby is born into a pool of his mother’s blood (presumably dead), animals suffer. However graphic, such savagery isn’t necessarily realistic. I wonder what a real New York paramedic would make of this film. Plus, this brutality (which also extends to the demeanour of the invariably dysfunctional patients) seems to fulfil no purpose except to provide voyeuristic, sadistic audiences with pleasure and entertainment (a lot more than your average violence-obsessed Hollywood flick even).

Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire is used to unrelenting ultraviolence, and Cannes seems to like that. Six years ago he premiered the equally graphic and gruesome A Prayer Before Dawn at the Festival.

Black Flies has just premiered in the Official Competition of the 76th Cannes Film Festival.

A Prayer Before Dawn

Posted on by victorfraga

There is absolutely no doubt that the story of Billy Moore is profoundly inspirational for young people. The British boxer spent three years in a Thai prison, following a conviction for drug-dealing. His daily life was more or less confined to cigarettes and extreme violence, which he both suffered and helped to perpetrate. There were no signs of rehabilitation. Against all odds, Billy represented his prison in a boxing tournament and won, and soon he was forgiven by the Thai King and sent back to the UK. He now leads a drug-free life, having found redemption through the combat sport.

The realism of the film A Prayer Before Dawn isn’t questionable. It’s easy to see that the French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire did his homework, and used real locations and real convicts with their bodies fully tattooed, golden teeth et al. The violence and the drug-taking are extremely graphic and vivid, and indeed disturbing. Strangely, the only thing that isn’t entirely graphic are the sex scenes. Cigarettes and punching are the most important currencies in an environment not too different from what purgatory must look like. The prison officers are corrupt and sadistic. The libido of the inmates is catered for in the shape of rape or consensual interaction with the occasional ladyboy (one of whom Billy has a short romance with). Life in prison is not a walk in the park.

The problem with A Prayer Before Dawn isn’t the realism, not even Joe Cole’s performance (which is quite convincing). Instead, it simply lacks emotional depth. The violence is so intense and incessant that it does not allow for reflection and contemplation. We never learn about Billy’s inner motives, feelings and ambitions. It’s true that a prison environment is not the place to share such sentiments, but cinema does have the power to convey more profound messages, and to rescue latent qualities not easily discernible at sight. And that’s what A Prayer Before Dawn fails to do. After watching nearly two hours of unrelenting and unforgiving violence, you might feel a little beaten down. Or maybe even knocked out.

Despite the realism, the gaze of the film is also very foreign. Most of the Thai dialogue doesn’t have subtitles, leaving the Asian men looking like some sort of incomprehensible beasts. That’s probably because the film is based on Billy’s own memoir, and it took him years before he learnt some Thai. I’m not suggesting life in a Thai prison is good, and the inmates and officers are kind and generous people, but removing the only tool that we have to understand them makes the story a little partial, contributing to a feeling of alienation. Ultimately, it feels a little like “good European corrupted by evil Asians”, even if that wasn’t the intention of the director (and I doubt it was).

A Prayer Before Dawn showed in the Cannes International Film Festival in May 2017, when this piece was originally written. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 20th.