A huge box office success in France in 2001, Le Pacte des loups soon acquired the status of a cult film, although critical reviews of the film are varied.  It is certainly a bold and spirited attempt to combine comic book adventure, Gothic horror and traditional historical drama, and the film appears very slick and glossy.  The problem with the film is, as is often the case with such big budget extravaganzas (particularly those made in France), it tries to be too many things at the same time.  It ends up alienating most of its potential audience by not recognising a simple fact of cinematic entertainment: most audiences prefer some genres and dislike others.  Try to combine a whole range of genres in a single film and you end up pleasing virtually no one.   Le Pacte des loups just about manages to avoid that trap by giving greater weight to one of its myriad facets - the fantasy adventure genre - by sacrificing credibility elsewhere.

So, whilst the martial arts sequences are well-filmed and magnificently choreographed, they appear completely out of place in a French period drama.  The horror element of the film would similarly be acceptable in fantasy world but is totally unconvincing when set in an 18th century French backwater.  As the film attempts to explains the mystery of the deadly beast, you are constantly saying to yourself, “Yes, but there must be a more straightforward explanation than this”.  ‘Contrived’ is the word that best sums up the plot.  For those less generous in their praise, 'overly complex' and 'utter tosh' are alternative phrases that may spring to mind.

This leads us to the film’s biggest fault: in virtually every department, it tries to carry everything to excess (except, that is, the quality of the script and acting, which is at best average, indeed excessively so).   Some stunning cinematography is ruined by needlessly over-used digital enhancements (to the point that you have no idea what is real and what is not, but everything feels false).   As if that wasn't bad enough, the action scenes are absurdly unrealistic and appear to have been directly imported from a Japanese martial arts video game.  The killings are so over the top they are more likely to provoke laughter than shock (it’s surprising this film didn’t result in a world shortage of theatrical blood). 

Granted, an action film such as this needs a few fight scenes to keep up the momentum and hold the audience's attention.  This is, after all, spectacle, not high art.  However, there is a limit to just how many fight scenes the average cinema audience can sit through in one film before it becomes offensively tedious. The film appears to be just an excuse for its director Christophe Gans to indulge his peculiar taste in martial arts – so frequently does the film drop into this familiar groove of air-slicing jump-kicks and super-human body punches.   At nearly two and half hours in the length, Le Pacte des loups is just too long to keep assailing us with the same display of senseless gratuitous violence (portrayed with the minimum of suspense and drama, and the maximum of stylised yet visceral brutality).

When the film does try to change track, it falters and quickly reverts to action and adventure (in other words, another fight scene).   Attempts at developing characterisation and trying to engage the audience’s sentimentality are as half-hearted as they are fruitless.  Even an actor of the calibre of Vincent Cassel fails to make his character much more than a bog standard two-dimensional villain (mad, bad, and shortly to appear in pantomime at a theatre near you).   Heaven knows what Monica Bellucci and Jean Yanne are doing mixed up in all this artistically bereft nonsense.

Thankfully, the film does have some positive features which make it (just about) worth watching.  As mentioned, some of the cinematography is of a high calibre, lending the film atmosphere and menace which its content is unable to provide.  The way in which the film shifts seamlessly from one scene to the next through some ingenious digital editing works well to maintain continuity of mood.  Unfortunately, the production team went way overboard with the digital technology at their disposal and some of the special effects (including inappropriate use of freeze-frame and slow-motion) merely impair the flow and strong visual feel of the film.   One special effect which does deserve credit, however, is the beast itself – a terrifying and convincing creation which is very cleverly used in the film to deliver maximum effect.  In that crucial area at least, the film shows some genius.

The success of Le Pacte des loups probably has far more to do with current popular tastes in cinema than to its content or artistic quality.  The film appears to have been conceived for adolescent young men (or those of that mentality) with an unhealthy addiction for violent computer games and a dangerous appetite for gory violence.  More depressingly, the film illustrates the increasing Americanisation of French cinema.  After other recent successes such as Taxi 2 and Les Rivières pourpres, an increasing number of talented young French filmmakers (directors and producers) are abandoning aristic quality in pursuit of big box office returns.  As a result, we can expect to see a load more films like Le Pacte de loups in future years – shallow Hollywood-style action efforts with a striking surface gloss but very little beneath that. Tragic.

© James Travers 2003