Vincent Gallo plays an unshaven doctor called Shane. He has come to Paris ostensibly for a honeymoon with his new wife, June (Tricia Vessey), but in reality as an excuse to find a rogue doctor, L�o (Alex Descas). Dr L�o was responsible for some mysterious research which Shane's pharmeceutical company became interested in. However, L�o left the company he worked for suddenly and disappeared without a trace. Meanwhile, L�o's wife, Cor� (the lovely B�atrice Dalle) meets strangers and eats them during copulation. This rather disturbing characteristic is somehow related to L�o's research, and he tries to keep her locked up in their cavernous home, which also doubles as a laboratory for his research when he's not working as your average doctor. Shane is unable to consummate his marriage as when he becomes sexually excited he starts to feel a rather worrying urge to bite his wife (whose arm bears the mark to prove it). He tries to find L�o and succeeds, in a sense. Becoming increasingly disturbed, he develops a fixation for the maid at the hotel they're staying at...

I had heard a lot about this film recently and was keen to see it as it sounded right up my street. I have to admit that I don't tend to like modern French cinema much - recent acclaimed films like BETTY BLUE, DOBERMANN, BAISE-MOI, MAN BITES DOG (OK, so this one's Belgian), etc, have all left me cold but I was willing to give this one a try. Sadly, this is definitely a film suffering from a severe case of style over substance. There is hardly any dialogue in the film and much of what there is is in English, which was a good thing as I was watching the unsubtitled French DVD. This means that Denis has to rely primarily on visuals and acting in order to create the right moods and to tell the story. This she does well, helped by the generally good actors (the exception being Gallo, an actor who you either love or hate, putting in his usual glassy-eyed, unfocused performance and 100% unbelievable in the role of a medical prodigy). The cinematography is beautiful and the music excellent (reminiscent in places of Bernard Herrmann's seminal score for TAXI DRIVER), but the film's pace is so slow and lacking in drive or plot that it becomes very hard to stay interested, particularly given that the ending is easily predicted. Now, slow pacing in itself is in no way a bad thing, but there needs to be something more on offer to keep the viewer involved than occasionally stunning shots of Paris.

I was also expecting a fairly extreme film, given the theme and the reputation it seems to have garnered. Again, I was to be disappointed. It takes a good hour before we actually get to a scene that threatens to disturb the viewer, but it's edited and filmed in such a stylised manner that any impact is lessened considerably (Dalle manages to be frightening and suitably animalistic, but it's really not at all that shocking). There's very little in the film to shock even the most unjaded viewer (unless you're prudish about female nether-regions that is), and I felt that this was very much a wasted opportunity. A film like AUDITION shows that it's possible to be extremely unsettling with a minimum of explicitness, but Denis just doesn't have the knack. In fact perhaps the most unsettling thing about the film were the strange close-up shots of women from behind, at neck level. These predatory, prowling images managed to suggest a lot more about the way Gallo and Dalle's characters are feeling than the actors themselves.

Finally, the film did not really seem to have any point to it (OK, so you desire someone so much you want to eat them - wow, how original). It meanders along, not answering any of the questions raised in the early part (what exactly was L�o's research into? How did he infect his wife and why? How did Shane become infected? What was the purpose of developing something that would make humans eat each other during sex? And so on.) The ending, as I mentioned above, is predictable and unsatisfying, and B�atrice Dalle doesn't even get naked (well, not properly anyway!)!!

I fail to see why people have been so ready to praise this film, unless it's simply because it's French and made by an acclaimed female director (admittedly, Denis' earlier BEAU TRAVAIL was an excellent film). It's not a bad film, far from it, it's simply not at all what it's hyped up to be.

Cast:
Vincent Gallo - Shane
Tricia Vessey - June
B�atrice Dalle - Cor�
Alex Descas - L�o