PASCAL CERVO IN LAST SCREENING

Auteurist slasher film

In Laurent Achard's third feature, Sylvain (the sweaty, haunted-looking and quick-to-tear-up Pascal Cervo) runs a small provincial French rep cinema and lives in the basement, a hiding place for piles of cinephile mementos that once belonged to his mother. In his spare time he murders women and cuts off their ears, complete with earring, to adorn old star photos tacked on his walls. But maybe this should not be taken to literally. As Variety critic Leslie Felperin comments, Dernière séance "plays like a private joke best shared among movie buffs." The real aim is not to tell a horror story so much as to riff off of Peeping Tom, Psycho, and various other cult films, to create a strange amalgam of art film and sleazy slasher flick. "Cinema Paradiso meets Psycho" is the rather random series blurb phrase. One may be reminded of other films about movie houses, such as Jacques Nolot's gritty and personal Porn Theater or Federico Veiroj's gentle, humanistic A Useful Life, in which the cinema is also threatened with closing. Last Screening is a perfect effort for late night hipsters, but mainstream art house clients will be horrified if they wander in. In France it appealed most to the critics for the cinephile mags, Cahiers du Cinéma and Les Inrockuptibles. The latter saw it as a blend of Argento and Bresson.

Sylvain's Empire Cinema is about to be closed down. The owner, who redid it in 1978, is going to turn it into a shop and Sylvain has to move out. The implication is that this crisis causes Sylvain to go off the deep end and begin his series of murders, losing all ability to distinguish between reality and the films he loves, and entering into his own B-horror sequence. Meanwhile he avoids harsh reality by continuing to show one film a day, running the projector, selling the tickets, and cleaning the seats afterward and letting in a handful of loyal customers such as Monsieur Paul (Noël Simsolo and a woman playing the lead role in Racine's Phèdre, Manon (Charlotte Van Kemmel), who has a romantic interest in him. In his free time he roams around killing young women. Sometimes older ones, like the female cabbie he encounters at a kind of karaoke theater, played by Brigitte Sy, former lover of Philippe Garrel and mother of Louis Garrel. She drives Sylvain out to the suburbs to the house where he grew up. Then he offs her.

Before this Sylvain, who usually dons a hooded coat for his exploits, offs a drum majorette practicing in a stadium and various others. Overwrought flashbacks show young Sylvain (Austin Morel) and his brutal mother (Karole Rocher), who's harshly running him through some memorized lines for what may be an audition. "Mamon dearest" (to use Felperin's line) evidently is the cause of both Sylvain's hatred of women and his obsession with classic female stars. One of Sylvain's victims finally gets the better of him and as he dies of stab wounds, he staggers through the projection room and manages to watch the last scenes of Jean Renoir's French Cancan, the film he's most recently been screening for customers for six euros.

The Last Screening debuted at Locarno (August 2011) and played at London and other film festivals, including Rotterdam (January 2012). It opened in Paris cinemas December 7, 2011 to rather mediocre reviews (Allociné 2.8) overall; but many critics acknowledged that Achard has a distinctive style and that his blend of auteurist/cinephile and horror themes is unique and "bears fruit." The film is included in the UniFrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center March 1-11, 2012 series, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, and was watched for this review at a press screening at Lincoln Center. Public screenings at the Rendez-Vous will be:

*Tues., March 6, 8:30pm – WRT; *Thurs., March 8, 6pm – IFC; *Sat., March 10, 1:30pm – WRT
*In person: Laurent Achard, Pascal Cervo and producer Sylvie Pialat

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.