Customer Reviews

One Deadly Summer (L'ete Meurtrier) [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"l'eté meurtruer" may not be as well known as "the story of Adele H." or "La Reine Margot" in the U.S. But, fans of Isabelle Adjani should most definitely check it out. Once again, Isabelle takes on a very challenging role - this time a mentally unstable young girl plotting revenge against the men (and their families) who brutally raped her mother 19 years ago. Along the way, she struggles to maintain what sanity she has left while coming to grips with her inner deamons. The movie's plot never gets dull and NOTHING is predictible. A multiple Ceasar winner in France, take a look and you'll see why.

A sultry summer tale of revenge, violence, desire, sexuality and deception, this psychological suspense film is gripping throughout. Shown from two different viewpoints and with the aid of flashbacks and with a slowly unfolding plot, it's long (2 1/4 hrs.) and fairly hard-to-follow upon first viewing but features superb momentum-inducing acting by Alain Souchon as the hopeful "boyfriend", Suzanne Flon as the deaf aunt - watch her facial expressions!, and especially Isabelle Adjani in an outrageous but moving part. As the lead character - known only as "She" - you either hate or sympathize with her. Either way, Adjani is at the top of her form - which is saying a lot! I shouldn't write any more without revealing the denouement, except, having won four Cesar Awards, this 1983 film, which finally became available in 2010 as Region 0 disc, needs to be seen by fans of smart thrillers.

'One Deadly Summer' begins in typical film noir style, with a hapless sap narrating an implied fall from idyllic grace, centring around a femme fatale who, far from being mysterious and unattainable, seems trampishly open and available. It's the old misogynistic story - the security of family and community are disrupted by a sexually predatory woman.

Soon, however, this male controlling consciousness is disrupted by the woman herself, and it is her narrative the film is concerned with, a mystery in which she is an avenging detective. Just as her physical body (her diminutive is 'Elle', emphasising her objectified status) wreaks havoc on the summer-clammy small town she inhabits, so her taking over the traditional male noir role destabilises the narrative. Traditionally, the detective story is told from one reliable point of view, be it an omniscient narrator, a witness or the detective himself. Here narrative is splintered into a variety of conflicting, subjective voices, each story they tell only confirming the unlikeliness of anyone ever finding the 'real' truth.

Most detective stories are concerned with a single crime which the detached detecitve tries to solve. The first ever detective story, however, was Sophocles' play 'Oedipus Rex', in which the investigation of the crime was really into the detective's own origins and his relation to his father. Ditto this film, in which the initial crime and the detective's very existence are horribly linked. Criminal and sexual transgression become indistinguishable, and the various plot developments are driven by the grimmest of Greek tragic ironies. This interrogation of family and community, of buried secrets in the past, is given extra force by allusions to the Nazi Occupation, still a sore memory.

'Summer' is a brilliant film, but not one that is easy to like or enjoy. Its pastoral setting provokes fears of the usual middlebrow wish-fulfilment, but this is filmed here with an almost ugly flatness. The presence of Edith Scob in a minor role and a fairground barrel-organ leitmotif might remind us of Franju's surrealist masterpiece 'Eyes without a face', another story about a girl with father problems driven to madness, and the film has references to sleepwalking and nightmares.

The film's success depends less on Isabelle Adjani's showy performance than Sebastian Japrisot's adaptation of his own novel, with its inventive use of those old cliches, the voiceover and flashback. It inspires journeyman director Becker to imaginative heights not reached before or since. Despite its clever reworkings of conventional noir, though, Becker and Japrisot don't entirely escape the accusation of misogyny - the lingering on woman as object of both desire and sexual violence leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

French cinema yet once again proved its brilliance through this tiny masterpiece. The film if described in one word 'Unpredictable', yes it is so, you never know what will be the next thing or what will be the next intension of a charecter will be. 'L'ete Meurtrier' is a film about charecters you may or maynot be familiar with in real life but you certainly will believe them. Isabelle Adjani is very precise and shines with excellence in her role. Alain Sounchon delivers a remarkable perferormence, and the chemistry between these two are beyond words. The film oozes with mystery every moment, though having situations very believeble and genuine. A film to look out for.

More an Intelligent drama, with some violent overtones more than the
"thriller" it's packaged as. This has more in common with "Rashomon"
than with the latest slick action movie out of Hollywood.

Isabelle Adjani plays a young woman unhinged by the knowledge of her
mother's brutal rape by 3 men years earlier, and she has built her life
around seeking revenge. The film's most striking aspect is the use of
multiple switching narrators, so we see the tale unfold from several
points of view.

Adjani, as always, has a tremendous emotional rawness, but for me the
performance (and the writing) wears its heart a little too much on it's
sleeve. I wish she wasn't so clearly crazy much of the time. Or that
more people seemed to notice just how blatantly manipulative her
behavior is.

The pace is very slow, which worked a lot of the time, but I did find
myself frustrated at moments.

But all that said, this is an interesting experiment in telling a
complex story, with strong performances all around. And if it
occasionally falls into melodrama, it also is full of moments that are
disturbing, moving and shocking.

One Deadly Summer is almost a parody, the comic quintessence of the foreign art-film as it once played America's "quality" cinemas: a picturesque foreign town, with a mysteriously unsociable population, a devious narrative, the revelation of sexual sins buried in the past, and (most important of all) the laughably gratuitous display of female flesh.
Isabelle Adjani plays an un-self-consciously provocative young woman from another planet who comes to live in a small French border town. She wears tight skirts and bends over frequently. She takes long baths in small washtubs from which he rises now and then to display a charming derriere. She plays bocce with her husband's friends in see-through lingerie. Yes, a Victoria's Secret model has come to disconcert the tradition-bound old countryside.
The role of the young, tragic, hardly-dressed heroine riveted the attention of French male film-critics on Adjani. She is the film and almost makes the gaudy role believable. The film was a guilty pleasure at the time and has grown more embarassing with the years, but Adjani was showered with awards. She has made truly fine films before and since. This film has fallen into a deserved, even embarassed, obscurity, but it is a fun watch and students of insanely wanton exploitation of beautiful women will find it matter to muse on.