Parc (2009)
Directed by Arnaud des Pallières

Film Review

Arnaud des Pallières evokes the unmistakable sense of an impending Apocalypse in his latest film, a dreamlike noir-style thriller based on John Cheever's 1969 novel Bullet Park.  Cheever's bleakly cynical assault on the emptiness of the American dream is frighteningly relevant for our own time, where the gulf between the haves and the have nots grows incessantly and personal happiness for individuals in all parts of the social spectrum appears to be on a constant downward trajectory.  With the flair for experimentation and provocation that he displayed in his first two films - Drancy avenir (1996) and Adieu (2004), two thought-provoking portraits of France's ill-treatment of immigrants and racial minorities - Des Pallières takes Cheever's complex modern novel and reworks it into a disturbing personal commentary on the hopelessly fractured society we have created for ourselves.

Parc is a film which cannot fail to provoke a strong reaction.  It is a film you will either love or hate.  It is not one that will leave you indifferent.  Nor is it a film that is easy to watch.  With its constantly shifting point-of-view, wildly non-linear narrative structure and occasional tendency to linger in vague abstraction for what seems an eternity, Parc is both a challenge and an enigma.  If you are not instantly scared off by it, the likelihood is that you will find it inordinately compelling, for it is surely one of the strangest films to have been unleashed on a paying cinema audience in years.  If you could take the weirder aspects of the cinema of David Lynch, Alain Resnais, Michael Haneke and Jean-Luc Godard, distil this unholy broth and make a film from the residue, the result would probably look something like Parc, Arnaud des Pallières's most bizarrely brilliant film to date.

Watching Parc is probably the closest you can get to experiencing a nightmare whilst conscious.  Des Pallières's stark visual and aural compositions have a hypnotic effect that no spectator can resist, one that can only lure you into its darkly oppressive, labyrinthine dreamscape.  But, try as you might, it is impossible to make any real sense of the film until you have watched it in its entirety, and even then you need to exert considerable intellectual strain to draw something tangibly meaningful from the metaphorical potpourri that Des Pallières kicks into our eyes.  The fragmented nature of the film is the main clue to what it is about - the disintegration of society and individuals that inevitably comes in a world where the pursuit of individualist goals take precedence over everything else.  Parc offers both a disturbing reminder of where we are now in the supposedly rich capitalist West (a society divided by wealth and status) and a terrifying warning of the horrors that are to come (complete, irreversible social breakdown) unless we change our ways and embrace a more holistic social model, one which draws together rather than constantly drives apart the various strata of our society.

The film revolves around two characters who are superficially quite similar but who could not be more different.  They are Clou and Marteau, the former a successful businessman, the latter a bored spoiled playboy, played respectively by Sergi López and Jean-Marc Barr (excellent casting in both cases).  As their names humorously imply (clou and marteau being respectively the French words for nail and hammer), the two men have a natural affinity for one another.  Marteau gratifies Clou's social-climbing aspirations; Clou provides Marteau with an easy victim so that he can make a misguided political point.  It is a perfectly symbiotic relationship:  every hammer needs a nail, and vice versa.  From the outset we know that Marteau is the main threat to Clou's ideal world, but he is by no means the only threat.

In one significant scene, Clou watches, in increasing distress, a television news report of riots taking place in Paris (possibly the horrific riots of autumn 2005).  For all his hard-earned success, Clou has become no more than a prisoner in his gated Riviera sanctuary, whilst the world around him burns.  Not only is he cut off from the outside world, he is unable to connect with his teenage son, who seems to be living on another planet even though they share the same house.  Clou's success has only brought him physical and emotional isolation.  His wealth does not bring him happiness, just an increasing awareness of his detachment from the rest of the world.  His one consolation is that he is safe within the confines of his gated Garden of Eden.  No harm can reach him or his family.  Or so he thinks.

Marteau is the serpent that has sneaked its way unseen into Clou's verdant paradise and is preparing to sting him where it hurts most.  Who would think that the well-heeled, well-spoken Monsieur Marteau is a totally unhinged psychopath, whose next project is a spot of do-it-yourself crucifixion intended to put the middle-classes back in their place?  Clou is so preoccupied with sucking up to his posh neighbour that he fails to see that he poses far more of a threat to his cosy little world than any number of car-burning rioters on the streets of Paris.  Clou has good reason to be afraid, but, like most others of his class, he is afraid of the wrong thing. 

Instead of looking over the parapet for the imagined armies of anarchists intent on burning down his castle, the clueless Clou should look nearer to home.  The greatest enemy of all is the enemy within.  The vision that Arnaud des Pallières offers us in his devastatingly topical third feature is one that can hardly fail to chill the blood.  It is a vision of a society that is on the brink of imploding, a social Armageddon caused by a failure of individuals to connect with one another and to realise that the well-being of society as a whole is an absolute prerequisite for the well-being of the individual.  There are no short-cuts to happiness.  The Paris riots of 2005 and the summer looting spree that took place in the UK in 2011 may be unrelated one-off occurrences, or they may be the overture to the nightmare that is yet to befall us.

Film Synopsis

Georges Clou is a prosperous businessman who is proud of his success.  He lives with his family in the south of France, in an immaculate gated residential area named Le Parc, where only the best people live.  His one worry is his teenage son Toni, who seems to have no zest for life and finds it impossible to communicate with his parents.  Clou strikes up a friendship with his neighbour, a refined aristocratic type named Paul Marteau.  Whereas Clou has had to work hard for his wealth, Marteau merely inherited his fortune and he looks down on Clou and people like him with abject contempt.  One day, Marteau makes up his mind that it his duty to take Toni to church and crucify him...