11/05/2005 - It's one af the French films in competition, Lemming, that opened Cannes Film Festival. A film very controlled with an atmosphere of surgical anguish that received frosty reactions

A rather cold welcome this morning for Lemming [+see also:
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film profile] by Dominik Moll which was screened to the Press to open the Cannes Festival and the official competition. Frosty reactions but without hostility as they adjusted their apertures to the atmosphere of surgical anguish in the third feature from the French filmmaker, a film very (perhaps too) controlled, which keeps the bridle firmly round the necks of an excellent cast: Laurent Lucas, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Charlotte Rampling and André Dussollier. Reminiscent of Hitchcock, Clouzot and David Lynch, the international critics saluted the precious nightmarish work by the director of With a Friend Like Harry, a piece presented four years ago at Cannes, of which Lemming constitutes a sombre continuation.

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With a perfectly accomplished first half hour, the script co-written by Dominik Moll and Gilles Marchand begins to release with an eye-dropper the poison which will very soon submerge the lives of a perfect young couple: Alain Getty (Laurent Lucas) robotic engineer and his homemaker wife Bénédicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Alain invites his boss Richard Pollock (André Dussollier) and his wife Alice (Charlotte Rampling) to dinner. The latter starts a scandal, flaunting her husband’s passion for prostitutes and attempting to seduce Alain in his office, then two days later she commits suicide at the Getty’s house. This destabilising intrusion comes at the same time as the discovery of a lemming, a Scandinavian rodent, trapped in the drain of the sink. Pushed beyond their normal habits, Alain and Bénédicte slide towards the irrational, Bénédicte gripped by fear of death and Alain suffering accident and injury. This trip into a strange universe, where dreams merge with reality and where Charlotte Gainsbourg begins to look more and more like Charlotte Rampling, can only end in crime. And, as in With a Friend Like Harry, normality is only restored with a tinge of relief and the sense of a return to a world that now seems more complex that it appeared before. Assisted, among other things, by moments of cinematographic brilliance, by many disturbing and disconcerting scenes in the dark corridors of the Getty house and by razor sharp dialogue, this thriller ‘made in’ Dominik Moll confirms his potential for the enigmatic and the unsettling, even if his filmmaking always labours to show emotions, other than latent fear. An exercise in style that nonetheless confirms the talent of a filmmaker at ease in film noir and who has now managed to launch himself into the exploration of other universes.

Produced and distributed in France by Diaphana and sold internationally by Celluloid Dreams, Lemming had a budget of 5,33 million euros, Advance on Receipts of 400 000 euros authorized by the CNC, a co-production with France 3 Cinéma(1,5 million euro,s of which 900 000 was broadcast rights), support from the region Ile-de-France and pre-sales from Canal + and CinéCinéma. It is released today in French cinemas and in Belgium on the 8th of June, and Vertigo guarantees a later distribution in Spain.

(Translated from French)