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Haute tension
2003 Horror / Thriller
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Credits
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Director: Alexandre Aja
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Script: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur
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Photo: Maxime Alexandre
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Music: François Eudes, Matthew Bellamy
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Cast: Cécile De France (Marie),
Maïwenn Le Besco (Alexia),
Philippe Nahon (Le tueur),
Franck Khalfoun (Jimmy),
Andrei Finti (Alex's Father),
Oana Pellea (Alex's Mother),
Marco Claudiu Pascu (Tom),
Jean-Claude de Goros (Police Captain),
Bogdan Uritescu (Gendarme),
Gabriel Spahiu (Homme voiture)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 91 min
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Aka: Switchblade Romance; High Tension
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Summary
Best friends Marie and Alex decide to take a break in the countryside to revise for their
exams. But soon after they arrive at Alex’s family home, a remote country house,
a sinister looking visitor arrives in a van. Marie watches in horror as the stranger
systematically slaughters Alex’s parents and her younger brother. Whilst trying
to rescue her friend, Marie ends up being trapped in the killer’s van as he drives off.
She manages to escape at a petrol station and makes a desperate attempt to find help so
that she can save Alex, who is chained up in the back of the van. It is hopeless.
Once the killer has disposed of the attendant at the petrol station and having failed
to get any support from the police, Marie has no other choice than to go after the killer
herself. The nightmare has only just begun…
Review
Alexandre Aja’s blood-soaked homage to the kind of gratuitously gory horror films that
earned cinema a bad name in the early 1980s is certainly not a film that will appeal to
all tastes. Whilst it has exceptional production values and is actually a rather
good film of its kind - certainly from the point of view of technical presentation, atmosphere
and performances – its unrelenting nihilistic mood and total lack of humour make it a
gruelling and pretty monotonous cinematic experience.
The fluid, voyeuristic camerawork and heart-thumping sound design are exceptional,
working together to create a sustained sense of menace which makes most of the first half
of the film almost unbearably tense. Watching this is like experiencing one of those
horrific nightmares where you are trapped and at the mercy of some unseen, unremitting
terror. Unfortunately, much of this psychological intensity is undermined
by Aja’s predilection for the Grand Guignol, a perverse need to make each killing as visually
spectacular and shocking as possible. Whilst the frenzied blood letting may satisfy
and titillate the horror junkies, most well-adjusted cinema goers will either find them
intolerably sick (to the point of walking straight of the cinema) or, more probably, excruciatingly
funny.
Haute tension is unashamedly a
pastiche of a sub-genre in American cinema, heavily laden with clichés and all
too obvious references to other films. Yet, despite this, the first half of the
film holds up rather well, largely on account of a terrific, totally convincing performance
from Cécile De France. The pace drops back several gears near the middle
section and doesn’t quite regain its momentum, although the spectator’s interest is suddenly
reawakened with a spectacular, and rather clever, plot twist within the last twenty minutes.
The film suddenly acquires a new, perhaps more terrifying dimension, although Aja doesn’t
quite manage to exploit the possibilities this offers. Instead, it's back to Texas
Chainsaw Massacre style horror, with more night-time chases and another dose of gratuitous
blood splattering.
When finally the film has reached its gruesome climax, having
well and truly run out of steam, there’s yet another twist. However, this one is
totally unnecessary – an example of a scriptwriter trying to be just a little too clever
- and the ending serves merely to unravel the thin web of logic that carried the narrative
in what preceded it. It’s possible to make sense of all this, but is the person
who enjoys this kind of film really likely to bother to make the intellectual effort to
do that? Whilst its flaws are a little too obvious and irksome, Haute
tension is a well-crafted homage to a genre which French cinema has tended to avoid,
and it certainly shows that Alexandre Aja has great promise as a film director, providing
he cancels that next consignment of theatrical blood.
© James Travers 2006
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