Chaos
Picture: C+ Sound: B- Extras: D Main Program: B-
When it
first starts, Coline Serreau’s Chaos
(2001) seems like it will be another video-shot project that is a motion
picture-wanna be. A distresses young
lady is running down the street, when a couple sees her being pursued by three
men. Instead of helping, they keep their
doors locked, and she is severely beaten.
They try to clean up and run from the scene, but their lack of
involvement will not be so easy.
The
ignorance sounds like a twist on the premise of Bonfire of the Vanities, film and especially book, but this is
smarter already. Malika aka Noemie
(Rachida Branki) lands up in the hospital, and while Paul (Vincent Lindon)
forgets about the matter, his wife Helene (Catherine Frot of Alain Resnais’ Mon Oncle D’Amerique, reviewed
elsewhere on this site) is not able to pass over what happened so easily. She visits the hospital and decides to do
what she can to help her and make up for what happened.
What
could have dissipated into formula and pretension moves along at a consistent
pace, and then starts to really kick in during its second half. As far as motion pictures shot on video,
instead of degenerating into more Dogme crap, the feature turns into something
you would usually see…. on film.
Malika
and Helene eventually become allies and more than just murderous pimps and
their ilk become the target of evil, which is what formula would usually
dictate and then make cartoons of the characters. Without some shallow Feminist pretension, the
film becomes authentically so as the women decide to fix things up in their own
way and all the characters find themselves in crossing situations that add up
to a most impressive outcome.
One
critic’s quote brought up films like Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998) and Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991), but Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa (1986) was even more prominent to me as I watched, though
the film is derivative of none of them, however haunted by them. To be in such company is a huge complement in
this case.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is from the 1.66 X 1 framed video source
and looks good for video. There is no
noise, digititis, or artifacts as we have seen on many a digital-video-to-DVD
transfer. Cameraman Jean-Francois Robin,
A.F.C., pushes the video to the limit in a way we have not seen yet. In this respect, this could be a key video
work when we look back at this five or ten years from now.
Though
the film was issued in Dolby SR analog and 5.1 Digital theatrical sound, this
DVD only offers a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track with some Pro Logic surrounds
in French only. There is a subtitles
option. The only extra is a trailer for
this DVD and a few other New Yorker titles.
The
acting got raves and it deserved them.
Serreau is still best known for 1985’s Three Men and a Cradle, famously remade as the hollow Hollywood production Three Men and a Baby (and its even more shockingly dreadful
sequel). There is comedy here, but that
misses the point sometimes, as the film is dealing in deeper and more layered
territory that cannot be simply laughed off.
No doubt some of the humor is intended, some specifically so aimed that
most audiences will miss it, but either way, Chaos is the kind of surprise we used to get from French cinema
more often and everyone should have a good look at it.
- Nicholas Sheffo
