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Newest Reviews: New Movies - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Old Movies - Touki Bouki: The Journey of the Hyena The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry Archives - Recap: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 , 2005, 2006, 2007 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012
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Under the Sand (Francois Ozon) 2001 I caught up with Francois Ozon’s Under the Sand on
DVD, and I notice that the cover of the disc has a quote from A.O. Scott in the
New York Times that calls the film “reminiscent of Hitchcock.” Surely, this
is misleading and it’s probably pulled out of context. The film is much closer
to a combination of Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Polanski’s Repulsion,
both far better films than this admittedly fine work, than anything
Hitchcock has churned out. Under the Sand stars Charlotte Rampling in a
stunningly bare, terrifically nuanced performance as Marie, a woman whose
husband Jean simply vanishes one day while they are on a beach. Like
Antonioni’s film, there is no explanation given for his disappearance, but
that ambiguity places the audience in the same boat as Marie. The film opens, like L’Avventura, with scenes that
are so obviously mundane that it becomes clear that any sort of disturbance to
enter this world would be earth shaking. When Jean disappears, the effect is as
much one of relief for the audience (finally something has happened!) as it is
one of sympathy for Marie. The film is delicate however, and the arrival of
drama is not nearly as dramatic as one might expect. Ozon’s work is
tremendously understated here, and he’s far more interested in the mindset of
his lead than solving the mystery he’s created. The way that she tenuously
slides between denying her husband’s disappearance and defying her marital
vows endows her characters with a rare complexity. Marie has an active fantasy life, and the imaginings of the
specter of her husband seem to be just the start of her mind’s wandering.
Throughout the film, it feels as if she’s trapped by the disappearance, and
even though she leaves her home, she’s never any more liberated than Deneuve
was in Repulsion. The film also shares with Repulsion a general
lack of willingness to directly address its true subject matter. It’s only
hinted that the boredom at the film’s start might have been the cause for
Jean’s suicide/disappearance, but it seems the most convincing argument
offered. Marie’s uncanny ability to create an idealized version of her mate in
his absence suggests she might have been making more of their relationship than
he all along. The film’s provocative ending places takes us no farther to a
concrete answer than anything else in the film, but expecting to find definitive
answers while mucking about in the mind of this fascinating woman is surely
folly. ***1/2 12-24-01 Jeremy Heilman
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