Alice Kruger and Matthias Schoenaerts star in Alice Winocour’s gripping paranoid thriller, DISORDER
DISORDER (Alice Winocour, 2015)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, August 12
www.sodapictures.com
French director Alice Winocour follows up her 2012 Cannes hit, Augustine, with the pulse-pounding, heart-racing paranoid thriller Disorder. Matthias Schoenaerts is sensational as Vincent, a role Winocour wrote specifically for him. A veteran of special forces in Afghanistan, Vincent has been sidelined back in France, diagnosed with PTSD and awaiting medical clearance for a return to the field. He is distraught and frustrated, as his identity as a soldier is his life. While waiting to hear from the doctors, he is hired by his team leader, Denis (Paul Hamy), to join a security force for a party at a French Riviera estate, known as Maryland, owned by powerful Lebanese businessman Imad Whalid (Percy Kemp). During the party, Vincent witnesses an altercation involving Whalid, cabinet minister Pierre Duroy (Philippe Haddad), and some mysterious figures. Later, when Whalid suddenly has to leave on a business trip, Vincent comes back to the estate as a one-person security force protecting Whalid’s trophy wife, Jessie (Diane Kruger), and her young son, Ali (Zaïd Errougui-Demonsant). Vincent is instantly suspicious of everything and everyone, constantly looking over his shoulder and scanning for threats ahead, which disturbs Jessie — until it appears that Vincent just may be right.
Disorder is a deep, intense cinematic experience as Winocour, cinematographer George LeChaptois, editor Julien Lacheray, and composer Gesaffelstein create a dark world filled with unexpected twists and turns. The story was inspired by real-life interviews Winocour conducted with elite soldiers, while the different techniques she employs in crafting the film were influenced by filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni and Alfred Hitchcock and photographers Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Gregory Crewdson, resulting in a taut, gripping thriller that never lets the audience take a breath. It’s an intense psychological journey that combines various genres, incorporating horror, home invasion, action-adventure, war, and politics into something unique and seductive. Schoenaerts (The Danish Girl, A Bigger Splash) is mesmerizing as Vincent; the entire film is shot from his frenzied point of view, and he pulls it off magnificently. (To get into the role, he embodied his character 24/7, sleeping only a few hours a day to attain the proper mind-set.) Kruger (Troy, Inglourious Basterds) is alluring as Jessie, who is cautiously skeptical of Vincent’s protection, refusing to acknowledge the situation she and her family are in; the scene in which Jessie and Vincent fall asleep on couches is a tender-hearted moment in their complex relationship. Winocour effectively turns the mansion into a war zone, one that exists inside Vincent’s head as well. It’s an exquisitely made, captivating film, as sharp as a knife edge, unyielding and unrelenting every step of the way. Disorder opens August 12 at IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza, with Winocour participating in Q&As at the latter after the 7:15 show and at the former following the 8:00 screening on opening night.
An adventurer as much as a filmmaker, German director Werner Herzog has headed into the Amazon in Fitzcarraldo (1982), burning Kuwaiti oil fields in Lessons of Darkness (1992), and Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World (2008). In his 2010 documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, he goes where few have ever gone before. In December 1994, speleologists Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel, and Christian Hillaire discovered the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in France, a vast series of chambers filled with remarkable paintings and engravings as well as animal bones, including the skulls of the extinct cave bear. The works were painted onto and carved into the walls, not limited to flat surfaces but around formations that jut out into the cavern. Dating back more than thirty thousand years, they are the oldest cave paintings ever found, well preserved through crystallization over the centuries and now by the intense and careful protection of the French government. Only a handful of scientists have been given access to the cave, until the spring of 2009, when Herzog, who has been entranced by cave paintings since he was twelve years old, was allowed to bring in a shoestring crew using specially devised equipment to film the space over the course of six four-hour sessions. The four-person crew — including Herzog manning the lights and his longtime cinematographer, Peter Zeitlinger, behind the 3-D camera — were not allowed to touch anything and had to stay on a narrow metal walkway that winds through the cave. They were accompanied by a team of specialists on the rare public journey: handprint expert Dominique Baffier, cave bear researcher Michel Philippe, the husband and wife team of Gilles Tosello and Carole Fritz, who map out the social connection between art and archaeology, Jean Clottes, the former director of the Chauvet Cave Research Project, and current director Jean-Michel Geneste. In true Herzog style, he also speaks with a master perfumer and two prehistoric flute archaeologists. Herzog’s decision to use 3-D — for what he says will be the only time in his career — was a stroke of genius, allowing viewers to feel like they’re walking through the cave with him, nearly able to reach out and touch the remarkable drawings, engravings, and skeletons. Herzog’s narration does get too dreamy at times, veering off on philosophical tangents before he adds a cool but silly coda, but, as always, he adds his trademark humor and charm.
In Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, Werner Herzog and codirector Dmitry Vasyukov follow Russian fur trapper Gennady Soloviev and others as they set their traps and capture their prey, living a solitary existence away from friends and family, but that is exactly how they like it. They do things the old-fashioned way, using the tools and methods of their fathers and their fathers before that, getting by with their hands, their ingenuity, and their brute strength, along with the help of their ever-faithful dogs. Soloviev, who first came to Siberia under the communist regime, decided to stay, doing his part to support the local economy while continuing the Muzhik traditions. He speaks openly and honestly about his daily existence, getting emotional when talking about the bonds he forms with his dogs, and one in particular. The footage was shot several years ago by Vasyukov, and Herzog came upon it quite accidentally, seeing it when paying a surprise visit to a friend. He got in touch with Vasyukov, who allowed Herzog to edit the footage, add a musical score by Klaus Badelt, and write his own English-language narration, which he delivers with great admiration, often getting philosophical about what is being shown onscreen. Unfortunately, the film does not have quite the visual vibrancy of Herzog’s original films, usually shot by cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger, and Herzog’s words lack the personal touch that has made such works as Grizzly Man and My Best Fiend, among many others, so magical. Still, Happy People is a fascinating look at a little-known group of men who live a very different kind of life in the twenty-first century. “You don’t need to pity us; we are proud,” Soloviev told Vasyukov upon learning that Herzog wanted to repurpose the footage. Happy People in no way pities these men, instead celebrating their adherence to the old ways and honoring their intimate connections to nature.
