Pigalle
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C+
Karim
Dridi’s Pigalle (1994) is one of the
more convincing peeks into the French underground, a subject that has been
taken up by other films, only to be undone by their pretension. Two big drug dealers clash in a world with
strippers, group sex clubs and specifically a couple (Francis Renaud and Vera
Briole) who love each other, but have too many ties to this world not to be
affected.
Vera
(Briole) is a stripper herself, and she lands up with a thief as her object of
affection. Pigalle is the name of the
place where all the disturbing events occur.
This is seediness unabridged. Too
bad more French films of late were not this honest. None of the characters are explicitly
sympathetic, but the downfalls we see make us wonder if most of the characters
would have done much better if they lived under better circumstances. The actors and real life extras (did anyone
say Neo-Realism?) are one of the reasons.
Dridi’s screenplay is the other.
The full
screen 1.33 X 1 image is in color, but lacks fine detail and is second
generation, likely an older professional analog source. Color is predictably dark, but is muted
beyond what cinematographer John Mathieson intended. This was his feature film debut. Since then, he went on to do the art film Love Is The Devil (1998), K-PAX (2001) and three of the last four
Ridley Scott films: Gladiator
(2000), Hannibal (2001),
and Matchstick Men (2003). Easily based on this history of exceptional
work, he is a member of the British Society of Cinematographers. I would love to see Pigalle in 35mm. The Dolby
Digital presents the sound in 2.0 Mono, as originally released, then also
offers it in a 5.1 AC-3 remix that boosts the sound somewhat, but cannot cover
up its age or limited fidelity. Extras
include five Koch DVD trailers including one for this film, and a series of
text pages that make up “production notes” for the film.
At only
78 minutes long, the film never gets to take off like it should, but it is an interesting
piece of work that is more consistent than many French films of the last 10
years or so that announce theirselves as important before anyone sees
them. There are no Dogme ’95 annoyances,
no bad digital work, fancy tricks that backfire, or false senses of
happiness. The graphic drug use,
violence and sexual situations are near a hard R rating.
- Nicholas Sheffo
