Well, I guess I enjoyed it. But then again I might have liked it more if the underlying driver for the story had not been tired old sexual jealousy again. It worries me that Martians tapping into Earth's filmic output will be forced to conclude that infidelity is humanity's only motivator. And that the whole business has now become so formulaic that it scarcely needs an actual event to get the process of destruction started.
Alain, after all, didn't actually *do* anything naughty. When the boss's wife comes on to him he acts with a restraint that is probably more unlikely than it is commendable. His only 'crime' is in not telling his wife all about it - which I would have though was a perfectly sensible choice given her whacko response when she finds out anyway. If keeping things to yourself is so terrible, how about her own failure to disclose the suspicion that festers within her thereafter, and ultimately leads to all the nastiness? I realise that these questions are all supposed to be tangential to the story, and we're supposed to concentrate on the mysterious dark influence of Alice on the lives of the couple and M. Pollock, with the strange presence of the lemming adding a weird metaphorical counterpoint to it all. And finally, the lemming is dead, along with both the Pollocks, nobody is sleeping with anyone they shouldn't, and life returns to suburban domestic bliss. Yeah, well, that's interesting - but I'm afraid my irritation with the weak underlying motivation failed to stretch my belief suspenders. Am I really supposed to accept that Alain and Bénédicte would not have sat down and talked about any of their respective worries, and continued to converse in sleepy monosyllables while the chaos mounted? Some here have compared this work with Lynch. I don't buy it. Lynch tells weird stories, only parts of which he puts on the screen. But they're all there if you hunt, and they're consistent when they have to be. This film had Lynchian moments, like the fantasy return home to a house full of lemmings, but Lynch wouldn't have pulled the punch the way this did.
I dunno. Maybe I'm missing things. Probably I'm missing things. Trouble is, I don't feel strongly enough to care. The only character whose fate and future I was really concerned about was the lemming.
CD
Alain, after all, didn't actually *do* anything naughty. When the boss's wife comes on to him he acts with a restraint that is probably more unlikely than it is commendable. His only 'crime' is in not telling his wife all about it - which I would have though was a perfectly sensible choice given her whacko response when she finds out anyway. If keeping things to yourself is so terrible, how about her own failure to disclose the suspicion that festers within her thereafter, and ultimately leads to all the nastiness? I realise that these questions are all supposed to be tangential to the story, and we're supposed to concentrate on the mysterious dark influence of Alice on the lives of the couple and M. Pollock, with the strange presence of the lemming adding a weird metaphorical counterpoint to it all. And finally, the lemming is dead, along with both the Pollocks, nobody is sleeping with anyone they shouldn't, and life returns to suburban domestic bliss. Yeah, well, that's interesting - but I'm afraid my irritation with the weak underlying motivation failed to stretch my belief suspenders. Am I really supposed to accept that Alain and Bénédicte would not have sat down and talked about any of their respective worries, and continued to converse in sleepy monosyllables while the chaos mounted? Some here have compared this work with Lynch. I don't buy it. Lynch tells weird stories, only parts of which he puts on the screen. But they're all there if you hunt, and they're consistent when they have to be. This film had Lynchian moments, like the fantasy return home to a house full of lemmings, but Lynch wouldn't have pulled the punch the way this did.
I dunno. Maybe I'm missing things. Probably I'm missing things. Trouble is, I don't feel strongly enough to care. The only character whose fate and future I was really concerned about was the lemming.
CD