The Bait

Maybe the title of the movie misled some viewers, Tavernier's "Bait" is not a common "thriller". The plot is indeed quite loose, the relationships between the characters are not a pretext for great drama, and you will hear no loud orchestral music in the climax (because there is no climax). Yet the emotion is here, thanks to the charm and subtle portraying of "Nathalie" by Marie Gilain (the rest of the cast is very good too). The great strong point of the movie is to smash every cliché about violence in modern society. Tavernier does a kind of "movie about movie viewers" (the youngsters watch a De Palma's "Scarface" video over and over) and in the French reality, violence is not exciting, not graphic, not choreographic, only real... The characters are even able to close their eyes on their own violence very efficiently as if nothing really happened while it's possible to avoid it's consequences... This kind of "modern" approach is really hard to achieve unless the directing is really good, and many bad directors tend to use the same tricks, such as hand held camera, etc... some other can't help emphasizing too much on the darkest aspects of the human nature, but here, on the contrary, there's a positive energy that flows from the characters (which makes the meaning so ambiguous and interesting) and as for the directing, the free but controlled camera moves and the general pace of the movie, gives it an elegant style which serves the script.

In Paris, the eighteen year-old Nathalie Magnan (Marie Gillain) works in a clothing store during the day and escorts successful men in a nightclub in the night. Nathalie lives with her boyfriend Eric (Olivier Sitruk) and his moronic friend Bruno (Bruno Putzulu) in an apartment she rents. Eric dreams on traveling to the United States with Nathalie to open their on business but his father does not finance him. Eric plots a scheme with Bruno, Nathalie and her friend Patricia (Clotilde Courau) to raise money. They should go with their costumers to their apartments and once inside the apartment, they should the door open so that they could rob the apartment. Things do not work well and Patricia decides to give up and not participate in the heists. But when their plan goes wrong, Eric and Bruno have to kill their victim.

"L'appât" is a French movie by Bertrand Tavenier that show an alienated youth in France that thinks in getting easy money despite killing their victims. The impressive story seems to be very realistic and when I saw it for the first time in the 90's, I was scared with the behavior of Nathalie, Eric and Bruno. Now the violence has increased worldwide and the impact of the murders reduces, but anyway, "L'appât" is still a great movie. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Isca" ("The Bait")

Tavernier has done better stuff than this one, to start with. The plot is easily understood: two dimwitted small crime adolescence guys want to make money. They aren't able to plan anything beyond having their petite amie of Lolita-type chatting up seemingly rich older guys in order to gain access to their flats and rob them. They are dimwitted enough to not research the locations orderly and even have no plan for what to do exactly once access has been obtained. No doubt, everything will end up in some horrible mess.

Tavernier wouldn't be Tavernier if he couldn't at least extract some deep psychological insight into the psyche of the heroes. So I stayed tuned and not just walked out. The psychological dissection of the bait, the Lolita v2.0, kept me in. She's friendly, hopelessly in love with one of the two friends in crime (because he is good-looking, as she once says). To me she's a product of our times, and an example of superficiality, a complete emotional emptiness that she can only try to fill with the guys and luxury. I think it is no spoiler to say that she sits emotionless in front of some cartoon video clips while her friends torture one of the victims. She doesn't question the torture at all, plugs ear-buds not to hear the screams instead. It has taken me to observe her. She is not cruel at all. Over time it turns out that she is principally emotionally completely detached from reality. In case you watch the movie, listen to her last line in the movie. I was devastated.

It starts as a funny film about young people. But soon it will be disturbing and I think this is because there is no one to identify with. The real violence and the incompetence is hard to stand but as far as the film tells its story the more convincing it will be. It´s an important discussion about gold, commercials and peoples weakness against it. This is not a reassuring film and it will keep you awake !

Björn Landström, Lerdala Sweden

8 years before Bertolucci and The Dreamers, 18 years before Coppoa (Sofia) and The Bling Ring, Tavernier demonstrates once again the modernity of the subjects chosen for his movies, with the tell of a youth without bearings - even moral - and dreaming to live the life sold by cinema, magazines and ads. Not able anymore to distinguish reality and fiction, good or bad, or recognize that acts have consequences.

We also discover Marie Gillain as an actress (it is strange to see in retrospect how few good roles she has had since) that shines over this movie. The rest of the cast does not embarass that performance and is very good as well.

This movie is also a movie where violence is shown as it is, cold, brutal, terrible. Which opposes to its magnification often seen in Hollywood movies, symbolized by different scenes in "The Bait" like the one with Scarface or in the video shop. The profit they take is all the same incriminating against violence.

To conclude, Tavernier offers us a very powerful movie, I really recommend it.