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TORONTO 2021 Special Presentations

Review: Inexorable

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- Fabrice Du Welz delivers an incredibly dark film noir scrutinising an inescapably fatal encounter between a mysterious young woman and a very bourgeois couple

Review: Inexorable
Alba Gaïa Bellugi and Benoît Poelvoorde in Inexorable

Marcel Bellmer (Benoît Poelvoorde) seems elsewhere. Elsewhere vis-a-vis himself, elsewhere in terms of the logistical complications caused by his little family’s relocation to his late father-in-law’s majestic country house, elsewhere when it comes to the entreaties of his wife (Mélanie Doutey) who is doggedly overseeing the entire operation, and practically elsewhere in the face of the questions put to him by a journalist who has been interrogating him and his wife - the great author and the successful editor - about the literary legacy of which they are now the custodians.

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Marcel burst onto the literary scene several years earlier with a first novel entitled Inexorable, which had an explosive effect but which he is struggling to follow up on; a first novel which helped win him his wife Jeanne and a solid fan base.

One of these fans is the mysterious Gloria (Alba Gaïa Bellugi), who breaks into the couple’s sumptuous home one summer’s day. She appears at the end of their drive, a nigh-on ghostly vision of a young woman and a white wolf. The white wolf is actually a dog belonging to the couple’s little girl Lucie (Janaïna Halloy), a dog who will act like a veritable Trojan Horse for Gloria, who will slowly force her way into the Bellmer’s lives.

Inexorable: that which we cannot escape. Right from the outset, the various characters are fated to meet their destiny. The first lie acts as a revelation, a grain of sand which methodically causes the great machine to fail. Despite their strength, their lies, their hesitations and their resistance, the characters hurtle head-long towards the final, terrible resolution.

Screened within the Special Presentations section of the Toronto Film Festival, Inexorable [+see also:
trailer
interview: Fabrice Du Welz
film profile
]
chronicles a foreshadowed tragedy. It’s a thriller set against lies and desires which are, for the most part, respectable, portrayed with deceptively demure classicism by Fabrice Du Welz, who, whilst continuing to probe the darkness of the human soul, is remodelling his particular brand of cinema in order to dissect the mechanics of tragedy. He takes the audience along with him in this feverish thriller, which is shot through with burning questions on lies and imposture, whether in the private sphere or in the eyes of the world, but also examining domination relations within the couple and wider society.

A filmmaker specialising in flight and errancy, towards the mystical, natural setting of his Ardennes-based trilogy or of Vinyan [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, and towards the troubling streets of Los Angeles in Message from the King [+see also:
trailer
interview: Fabrice du Welz
film profile
]
, Du Welz dares to try his hand at a huis clos with Inexorable and sets up his film as such. The bourgeois residence - the theatre of our tragic heroes’ merciless fall - seems to throb with their fears, their anxieties and their desires, but it also cracks up and falls apart like its inhabitants, the blowing fuses echoing the bursts of madness experienced by these puppet-doll-characters, who roam the manor house corridors as if people possessed.

Inexorable is produced by Frakas Productions, who are getting their new collaboration with the Belgian filmmaker off to a brilliant start. Du Welz is also linking back up with his French producer The Jokers Film, who will also handle distribution in France where the film will be released on 26 January 2022. International sales are entrusted to Playtime, while distribution in Belgium will be steered by O’Brother Distribution.

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(Translated from French)

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