Country:
Belgium
Recognizable Faces:
Eline Kuppens
Mattias Schoenaerts
Directed By:
Pieter Van Hees
Here's a movie that has been discussed in the "inner circles" of horror movie fans. The most artsy called it a masterpiece and the most mainstream called it a borefest, I had to make my opinion on it. The poster claims "As Important As Let The Right One In", a movie I enjoyed and would go as fas as calling "a legit vampire movie". Those who know me are probably spitting their coffee over their keyboard from my last statement. So I made the most out of my lonely week-end and tried Belgium's Left Bank.
Marie (Kuppens) is a long distance runner (the distance is not mentioned, but from the editing I'd say anything from 800 M to 1500 M), who's stopped from exercise by her doctor, three weeks before the European championships. Bummed out, she seeks comfort in the arms of Bobby (Schoenaerts), a young archer she met at the training center. He has everything a 22 years old girl wants. He's sexy, independent, has a car and his own place and makes love like a Pagan God (which is explicitly displayed in the movie). So she moves in with him on the left bank, a place forsaken by the Gods. That's something she only finds out after she consumed sexy Bobby several times and busts up her knee in the forrest, which you can figure, hampers her mobility. Shenanigans inspired by The Wicker Man and Rosemary's Baby ensues.
I'm not going to lie, it's not a very original movie. Left Bank uses the old rent-a-scare plot twist which consists in using manufactured villain/monster. This time it's the sect/underground society that doesn't play by the rules. Despite its visual "slickness" and its refreshing approach, you can traces its lineage to the History of mainstream horror movies without any troubles. The content is very mundane, but Left Bank shines in its execution.
The story is delivered in an unusual, I would say "literary" approach. There's a build up of tension and a chapter-like approach where scenes follow a pattern: false alarm/scare/relief. It puts the movie out of reach of people who don't get tension. You heard it before "it's so boring, nothing happens". It's a bit of an elitist stylistic choice indeed, but it's what makes Left Bank stand out from the pack.
The visual approach is Left Bank's best achievement. It's one of those "arthouse" movies, which I think is not preoccupied by telling a story as much as creating a series of haunting images. In a way, Pieter Van Hees succeeds at this. If you cut Left Bank into a series of images and expose them in a museum, the result would probably be more terrifying than the movie as a whole. Scenes where Marie walks alone in a tunnel with a wine bottle are dark and sublime, but they don't tie anything together. The "black hole" scenes are also of a stunning beauty, but they thrown in there for not much purpose. They could've anchored the movie around the black hole and gave it some kind of narrative pertinence, but it didn't.
Is Left Bank beautiful? Yes. Is it worth seeing? I think so. Is it the hailed masterpiece everyone talks about on the internet? Hell no. It's an above average horror movie that doesn't avoid any traps of the genre despite having the typical condescending attitude of "arthouse movies". Left Bank is the kind of movie you watch once and then move on to other things. Or re-watch your classics. My problem with it is that it doesn't live up to its ambitions. You average film cognoscenti will tell you: "It was all right".
SCORE: 76%
