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ON
THE RUN
6/10
Cavale
aka The Trilogy : One (La Trilogie – Cavale)
Belgium
(Bel/Fr) 2002 (shown 2003) : Lucas BELVAUX : 111 mins
Left-wing
guerilla Bruno LeRoux (writer-director Belvaux) busts out of jail and
promptly heads to Grenoble, where his former colleagues in the ‘Popular
Army’ have settled down to lives of uneventful domesticity. Jeanne (Catherine
Frot) finds her class-consciousness reawakaned and attempts to help, but
balks at putting her family in peril. As he plots his revenge on his enemies
– individuals and organisations – Bruno finds time to help out Agnes (Dominique
Blanc), a cop’s drug-addict wife enduring the agonies of cold turkey.
But the net is closing in…
The first
of Belvaux’s wildly ambitious Trilogy, On the Run is fitfully
absorbing on its own but really only makes sense alongside its ‘companion
pieces’ An Amazing
Couple (a light farce) and After
Life (a dark drama), which unfold in roughly the same time-frame,
in the same places, featuring overlapping main characters. Belvaux deserves
credit for attempting something so wildly original and ambitious, even
if the whole thing doesn’t quite come off – the individual episodes are
all somewhat lacking, and Belvaux unsurprisingly isn’t equally at home
in each of the three genres he deploys.
On the
Run is perhaps the weakest of the three, its unsophisticated approach
to political themes typified by Bruno’s surname – “the red” (unless, of
course, we’re supposed to infer that this is a name adopted by Bruno himself).
For a more consistent and penetrating presentation of revolutionaries-turned-terrorists,
Christian Petzold’s brilliantly-constructed The
State I Am In is well worth seeking out. On the Run is
relatively sloppy in comparison: after a pulsatingly directed and edited
opening getaway sequence, the pace often ebbs, and the film doesn’t really
cut it as the ‘tense thriller’ we’re led to expect.
Bruno’s escapades
often have more of the air of absurdist comedy, especially the overextended
climax in the Alps and its end-note of Beckettian nihilism. But this does
give a quirkily beguiling edge to overfamiliar subject-matter, and Bruno
is an intriguingly unsympathetic and brutal central character. Reportedly
stepping in at the last minute to replace an actor, Belvaux turns in a
strong, believable performance as the idealistic Bruno while the ever-reliable
Frot provides excellent counterpoint as the conflicted, vulnerable Jeanne.
9th February,
2004
(seen 8th February : Tyneside
Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne)
by Neil
Young
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