See How They Fall

Two veteran stars bring weight to this grimy little drama with an unusual flashback structure - along with laconic captions - which despite the gorgeous Bulle Ogier appearing fleetingly as Jean Yanne's wife has strongly if unresolved homoerotic overtones.

Yanne, who serves as the film's weary cornerstone, sports a scruffy beard that makes him resemble Akim Tamiroff, who wouldn't have been at all out of place in the grungy urban hell director Jacques Audiard makes of modern Paris.

This film is full of interesting ideas. Some scenes are truly hilarious. The dialogs are witty and colloquial. The tension in the film comes not so much from the 'murder mystery' plot as from the relationship between the characters. The film tells two stories in parallel.

The first story involves the characters played by Trintignant and Kassovitz. Trintignant is an ageing drifter, with a somewhat ridiculous macho toughness, who is followed by a naive young man played by Kassovitz with plenty of good-natured smiles. Many good moments in the film come from the contrast between the two characters, for example when Trintignant tries to teach Kassovitz how to be intimidating.

The second story tells how a salesman,played by Jean Yanne, gives up his job and his wife to find the murderer of a young friend. Yanne plays the part with a kind of aggressive irony. I wish I could describe this better.

After a while the viewer understands how both stories are connected and they meet indeed in the end, in a surprising but also logical ending.

The film is a successful mixture of the witty but superficial gangster films the director's father (the celebrated Michel Audiard) used to write, and the "typical french film" with lots of psychological depth and lots of care in the display of emotions.

This noir character study uses the plot only as a vehicle to explore its protagonists' world. Although it's an honest attempt and the actors do very well (Trintignant is a personal favorite anyway), the pace is too slow and tiring and the lack of action sometimes becomes evident. Sometimes words cannot generate interest by themselves.

I just watched this last night, having been very intrigued by Audiard's other works, esp.the brilliant and somewhat indescribable Read My Lips. See How They Fall was indeed one of the more unusual stories I have seen in film. While the story has 4 main characters, it is the two most unassuming characters that anchor and propel the film. One is an over-the-hill depressive teddy bear of a salesman, Yanne. The other is a mentally slow/mentally challenged grown up child, Kassovitz. The former is searching for his only friend's killer; the latter is a puppy dog follower of a seedy petty criminal, Trintignant. (I've never seen Tr. in this kind of role. He is extremely convincing and completely revolting.) Most of the film builds the back story and follows the lives of the 2 pairs of friends. There are certainly elements of Midnight Cowboy and Of Mice and Men, but I was very pleased to see that the stories have many unexpected elements, mostly to do with Yanne, as he gradually leaves behind everything familiar to him and 'becomes' the quest to find his friend's killer. He moves obsequiously and with ease through worlds completely foreign to him, and the viewer's empathy is gradually drawn into the essence of who he is. One completely believes that he is who he is playing, and the same is true of Trintignant and Kassovitz.

The film's resolution occurs close to the end, when the 2 stories intersect. Before this, the film would have been greatly improved if 30% of it had been edited out, but the film's resolution is quick and perfect, like a gentle but effective 1-2 punch. In both Read My Lips and See How They Fall, Audiard shows a very unique way with unusual characters and their just-as-unusual stories. Both films are relatively quiet and contemplative, and the many silences lull the viewer into a distinct internal rhythm. Long after the films have ended, this rhythm stays on.

While it doesn't all 'work', this is a more interesting partial failure than most people's complete successes.

An oddball mix of thriller, character study and very quirky comedy. It follows two parallel stories that finally intersect.

a) The unlikely, ultimately homo-erotic friendship between a small time con-man/drifter (Jean- Louis Trintignant), and the semi-retarded wanderer he meets on the road (Mathieu Kassovitz).

and b) a man's mid-life crisis when a cop friend is shot and left brain dead, leading him to give up everything, work, marriage, to try and find meaning in his life by finding the killers.

There are leaps of logic, but some very nice character moments as well. I liked it even better on 2nd viewing.