No.335 : What the Waters Left Behind (2017)

What the Waters Left Behind at the IMDb

As our regular reader will attest, we are not adverse to the odd foreign film here at the ‘W’ Movie Blog and, with that in mind, let’s head south to Argentina for this derivative murder fest.

We get some exposition to start as we learn of a small village that was beset by rising flood waters. It had to be forcibly evacuated by the military before it was totally engulfed with the population displaced - or where they? Obviously not.

Many years later a documentary film crew have returned to the village which has recently re-emerged, due to the falling floodwaters. They are pretty low rent, relying on an ancient VW camper van and some limited equipment. They have in tow a young woman who was a refugee from the village, and the plan is to capture her memories of the once vibrant town.

On the journey to the village we get to know our six victims, er, filmmakers, who have the usual list of quirks and character points such as love rivals and a small poodle owner. Yappy dug is definitely getting it.

They stop off at a small petrol station and visit the worst toilet this side of ‘Trainspotting’. The attendants are all a bit strange, especially the old woman who insists that they buy her pies in exchange for her ‘clearing up their shit. On the evidence seen, not much shit gets cleared up, even on a good day.

Our heroes get ripped off on the fuel and window screen wipe down so they roar off yelling abuse and ditching the rancid pies - huge mistake!

At the village things go OK at first with the refugee showing the team around and recounting some interesting tales. Their van however breaks down and it’s clear someone has cut the petrol pipe. They make the standard error of splitting up and soon they start to fall afoul of some colourful locals and a snake. As their numbers inevitably whittle down, we wonder who will survive and whether the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ people have their copyright infringement lawsuit ready to go.

I think if this film was in English it would have been easier to dismiss as a clear knockoff in an already crowed survival horror genre. As it was, the Spanish language and exotic locations kept me interested or at least reading the subtitles.

It’s clear early on that the villains of the piece were a ‘Sawney Bean’ type cannibal family, with the gas station pies the first hint that maybe the vegan option wasn’t so bad. They revealed themselves gradually, and the look of sheep skull hats and massive cudgels was quite impressive and very ‘Silent Hill’.

The big surprise was nothing of the sort and I was only caught unawares as it was actually presented as such and not just assumed. The locations were excellent for the first hour with what looked like a real life disaster zone being used. Once the action decamped to an obvious set for the cannibals lair I lost interest and the film any momentum that it had earned.

There were a few bone crunching kills but nothing you haven’t seen before and better in films like ‘Wolf Creek’.

Overall this was an interesting pastime but it offered little new apart from some inventive locations and costumes. I’d seek my thrills elsewhere if I were you.

Best Bit : ‘Nearly Done’  ‘W’ Rating 11/23

 

No.329 : Welcome to New York (2014)

 

Welcome to New York at the IMDb

You know that when a film opens with captions and the lead actor talking about how the following is a work of fiction, that it has probably encountered legal difficulties. Having seen the film, it’s not hard to see why, with the events depicted following closely those of the Dominique Strauss-Khan affair when he, whilst head of the IMF, was accused of raping a hotel chambermaid.

Gerard De-pa-du stars as a totally different character, a French politician called Devereaux. He is a fat and sleazy individual who spends the first half hour of the film grabbing and sniffing a stream of prostitutes in his luxury New York hotel suite. He clearly has no respect for women and this leads to him grabbing a chambermaid when she has the misfortune of chancing upon him as he exits the shower.

He knows he has done wrong and immediately heads to the airport. The maid has however went to the police and Gerard is pulled off his plane and put into jail. We see him processed through the system, including a ‘burn my eyes please’ strip search, and then his trial begins.

He has a rich wife in the shape of Jacqueline Bisset who pays his $1m bail and $60k rent on the house he is confined to during his trail. With teams of lawyers looking to discredit the victim, will he get off and will he mend his ways?

Directed by ‘Bad Lieutenant’ helmer Abel Ferrara this was never going to be an easy watch and it certainly delivered on that front. It was a brave performance by the morbidly obese Depardieu who wasn’t shy in showing all - must have been nice for him to see his willy again at least! He did get lots of scenes pawing at prostitutes and these were unsettling rather than erotic as his letchy hands and massive belly dominated the screen.

I could see why Strauss-Khan’s lawyers objected to the film as it’s clearly about him, with the same townhouse used as he rented during his trial, but they make it explicit that the character was guilty of the assault and got off due to backhanded tactics, whereas Strauss-Khan was acquitted - although he did reach a settlement with the claimant in her civil case.

The film fell between two stools in that it was not a documentary but it also wasn’t a work of fiction. They can speculate what happened but it did seem unfair to ride roughshod over one person’s rights whilst championing those of another. 

There were large sections of the film in French with no subtitles offered on my copy. I don’t know if that was a deliberate ploy to make some of the evidence uncertain or just to hide some of the slander.

The opening sections with the debauched life style and the middle sections in the jail were good, but the trail and outcome seemed rushed and skimmed over. Some old archive footage of a verdict was shown and I take it this was from the original case. It did cement the idea that the real case and the one shown here were one and the same, with both leaving questions unanswered.

This is not what you’d term ‘light entertainment’ but there were some strong and compelling scenes and excellent performances all round. Overall however it was a bit of a misfire, with me knowing less about the real case having watched this dramatization of it.

Best Bit : Gerard Has a Night In ‘W’ Rating 15/23