THE TRILOGY ONE:
On the Run
(Cavale)
Directed
by Lucas Belvaux, starring Catherine Frot, Lucas Belvaux, Dominique Blanc
(114 minutes, 15)
Programme Notes
One 24-hour period
in Grenoble. Three films, three genres: thriller, comedy, and melodrama. Three
very different couples. All audaciously intertwined in this groundbreaking trilogy
of films. An outstanding cinematic achievement.
"To see all three is to see a fourth film." Director, Lucas Belvaux
Mark Kermode thinks the first raw and urgent instalment in
Trilogy is first class: [Read
full article here]
Owing more to the thematic connections of Kieslowski's Three Colours series
than the episodic triumvirates of The Matrix or Lord of the Rings, Lucas Belvaux's
acclaimed Trilogy comprises three films in three genres (thriller, comedy, melodrama),
connected by incidental characters who collectively prove that nobody is a bit
part player in the story of their own life. Although viewable in any order,
British distributors have opted to dub this first thriller, Cavale/On the Run,
as Trilogy: One, a calling card for the series which unfurls over the coming
month.
This raw and urgent tale of an escaped anti-capitalist terrorist (played by
Belvaux himself) attempting to restart an anachronistic urban revolution leaves
the viewer panting for more. From the harsh efficiency of the opening escape
to the Seventies-inflected nihilism of the ice-cold ending - via Taxi Driver-style
interludes of solitary weapons fetishism and outbursts of functional violence
- Trilogy: One hits all the right buttons.
Most impressively, the very contemporary theme of rebels succumbing to domestic
bliss only to be haunted by the ghosts of a violent past is brilliantly personified
by Jeanne (Catherine Frot), a 'good mother' torn between aiding a former comrade
and protecting her new family. Imagine the 'school's out' scene from Tarantino's
vacuous Kill Bill: Volume One played straight rather than for postmodern thrills
and you'll get some sense of the intelligent tension evoked by Belvaux's gem.
Urged along by the menacing strings of a lurking double bass score which pursues
our anti-hero from the streets to the hills, this is a first class first instalment
for Trilogy, and a tough act to follow for Two and Three, whose central characters
we have now met and wish to know better.
Review by Peter Bradshaw Friday November 14, 2003, The Guardian [Read
the full review here]
Lucas Belvaux's exhilarating project of three interlocking movies is something
that needs to be experienced in its tripartite totality. The Trilogy is not
epic precisely, as the three movies are superimposed rather than laid end to
end: a witty study of parallel realities and parallel lives. In all probability,
it will turn out to be more than the sum of its parts, though I suspect an inbuilt
formal paradox means that, considered singly, each constituent film is somehow
less satisfying than a regular stand-alone picture would be. Anyway: these movies
promise to mesh over their characters like a Venn diagram; peripheral characters
in one will be centre-stage in another and they are very different genres: thriller,
comedy and melodrama.
Trilogy: One (subtitled On the Run) has Belvaux himself as Bruno, a radical
terrorist on the run from prison after 15 years banged up, but finding that
he is an embarrassment to his old lovers and comrades in Paris, who have let
the flame of revolution gutter and die. Only a junkie called Agnès (Dominique
Blanc) helps him. This picture slouches along like something Jean-Pierre Melville
and Frederick Forsyth might have dreamt up between them. But is there a touch
of pastiche about it? Our perspective will be helped when Trilogy: Two comes
out in a fortnight, and Trilogy: Three a week after that. An audacious, imaginative
event.