Escalier C (1985)
Directed by Jean-Charles Tacchella

Film Review

Escalier C is a competently realised but not particularly memorable depiction of how events and experiences can radically alter a person's view of the world and result in a profound inner transformation.   The film is based on the prize-winning novel by Elvire Murail, although it has a totally different ending (in the novel, the central character Forster becomes homosexual).

Whether it is because of this tinkering with the original plot or not, the film doesn't really ring true.  Despite a creditable performance by Robin Renucci, his character, Forster, is just too obviously obnoxious ever to win over the audience's sympathy, and his transformation towards the end of the film appears mildly ludicrous.

Film Synopsis

Forster Lafont is a young and cynical art critic who lodges in a room off Staircase C of an ordinary-looking apartment block in Paris's 14th arrondissement.  It is the kind of place where you would expect to find young people, particularly artists, happily living alongside one another and tolerating each other's bohemian idiosyncrasies.  Forster fits the social profile but he is clearly out of place and has no sympathy, no liking for anyone around him.  The son of an important diplomat, he feels he has a right to look down on others and sneer at their shortcomings.  Cynicism has become part of his DNA.

Forster's immediate neighbours are a colourful crowd who include: Bruno, an unemployed dilettante who is always on the scrounge; Claude, a gay costume designer who has just fallen out with his boyfriend; Joss, a typographer who comes home drunk every morning; and Virgile, a failed writer who is always breaking up and making up with his girlfriend Béatrice.  The oldest resident on the staircase is Madame Bernhardt, who likes to keep herself to herself.  The latter's sudden suicide comes as a shock to Forster and causes him to see things from a very different perspective.  Feeling he is partly to blame for the old woman's death, the young man rises above his erstwhile cynicism and resolves to carry out Madame Bernhardt's final wish, to be buried in Jerusalem...