Pacifiction

There are some serious qualities there. First of all, who doesn't want a trip to Tahiti?? There are "beautiful shots", as they say: waves, skies, nature, Benoît Magimel pensive on the beach, sometimes on an absolutely magnificent music score. It's a film that can be just admired as is.

It's also a film that can be used to admire Magimel, to hear him speak, wavering, a little mushy, always on the verge of tripping over his feet... It's quite fascinating.

But his performance is not enough to compensate for a slow mise-en-scene by default, rigid, flat, desperately sterile. It is the disease of a certain European-Asian festival cinema which under-cuts its mise-en-scene out of ease and habit. Despite everything, there are some exciting ideas here and there, never to be forgotten, a woman framed in a certain way for no particular reason, that's something but that's not much.

And then what do Magimel and the others really have to say anyway? The story is of very questionable interest. He is a high commissioner of the French Republic who navigates between local councilors against a backdrop of rumours of a resumption of nuclear tests in the region... I've heard of more exciting stories.

I was bored today and decided to look up the most recent Cesar Award nominees and winners. That's how I ended up with this "motion picture" and I decided to go ahead to see it because I WRONGLY thought i would be thrilled for the 2hrs45mins but Alas!, tis was not to be.

It should have been made into a documentary enlightening viewers of the French nuclear tests that were conducted in Mururoa and the physical and environmental consequences that followed. Rather than making this a feature length film and putting us through this travesty. My rating is this high only because of the scenery.

It felt like a bad April fools day prank.

One of those movies that has raving critic reviews but where the audience just doesn't seem to like it.

The movie didn't work for me. I enjoyed the beautful locations and the mood. The acting was good. But the plot just didn't go anywhere. Some scenes seemed to go on forever without adding anything to the movie. I kept up for about an hour and then I just started daydreaming.

When I left the cinema, someone was complaining to me in the bathroom that it was such a bad movie. Another movie-goer put it nicely when walking out the doors: "well, this was 3 hours of my life I'm never getting back".

Benoît Magimel is the easy going French High Commissioner "De Roller". Charged with representing the French Government on it's Polynesian outpost of Tahiti where he travels the island in his chauffeur driven Mercedes glad-handing and pretty much going from party to party. The arrival of an admiral (Marc Susini) and some rather hunky sailors on his island soon has tongues wagging, though. Before he knows it, his placid existence is being disturbed by increasingly popular - and disturbing - rumours that the French are to restart nuclear weapons testing nearby. Of course he is assured not, and makes similar assurances to the population himself, but when local girls start to go missing the presence of the military and a general sentiment amongst the locals seems to encourage a view that it's time to assert their own independence. This creates more problems that begin to cause our diplomatic quite an headache. Can he sort it all out? Is there even anything to sort out? The thing with this film is that it is far, far too long. The story could easily lose an hour and no harm would be done. The plot, political mischief and island intrigues, would benefit from that tightening up too - perhaps sparing us from the many shots of his car! Magimel delivers an efficient characterisation here, but he is largely left to his own devices as the supporting cast struggle to build upon a rather thin storyline that needed a bit more shoring up to sustain the interest as it rambled on. It has it's moments, but sadly just not enough of them. Oh, and it's pretty wet down there!

Serras thriller is visually exuberant as it is subtle and minimalist in terms of plot. Making good on its lead motto that 'politics is like a nightclub', for almost three hours the viewer sees barely more than Benoît Magimel in his role as bon vivant politician De Moller philandering around the island of French Polynesia, lending an ear to its manifold inhabitants, drinking, feasting, and preaching about his limited administrative role in the grand order of things, interrupted only by stunning episodes of visual allegories on geopolitics. Yet, I found watching De Moller in his ambiguous social interactions infinitely charming and astonishingly engrossing. On its allegorical level I found this movie truly mesmerizing - and I am not easily mesmerized. It is a gloomy thriller about nuclear balance of power, about ants in a battle of elephants, but only behind the curtain and only the abstract. It will therefore appear slow and uneventful to the ones who are looking for some concrete down-to-earth action.