Film
An artier version of Hostel—black and white instead of blood red, but with a similar subtext of class distinction as bloodsport—the French-Georgian thriller 13 (Tzameti) taps into the same terror of the world’s creeping monetary ruthlessness. Globalization has brought back the “land where human life is cheap” genre with a vengeance: in these films, the world is divided between those rich enough to pay for human livestock—people who are above the law, perhaps because they make the law—and those poor enough to stock the corral. Gela Babluani’s shocking debut proposes the logical extension of a hard-scrabble economy where everyone elbows for the same low wages: a human cockfight.
To read more would spring the trap that Babluani’s screenplay methodically sets—one of the nastiest movie surprises since the jarring tonal shift of Takashi Miike’s Audition. A young laborer, Sebastien (Georges Babluani), whose meager earnings go to his immigrant family, overhears a sickly neighbor discussing a windfall headed his way. All he has to do is take the train ticket provided in an envelope and follow the instructions given to him. When the man dies, fate drops the envelope in Sebastien’s hands—and hey, who wouldn’t need the money?
Most everybody needs it: the grim question writer-director Babluani asks is what they’d do to get it. Without giving too much away, the scenario lands Sebastien in a remote country-estate hell drawn equally from The Deer Hunter and The Most Dangerous Game, where other desperate, impoverished men down morphine to face their roles in a diabolical casino. Babluani provides no backstories for either the bettors or the contestants: their participation on either side seems to say enough—along with the degree of reluctance, fear or enthusiasm they show. All that remains, past the movie’s halfway mark, is the existential horror of the game, the terrible anticipation between each round—and the euros stashed everywhere, in bundles, in bags and in automatic counters.
Star Babluani, who has a pallid, callow look reminiscent of the young Anthony Perkins, doesn’t have the seriousness or intensity the situation requires—although it’s truly chilling when the game finally wipes the faint smirk off his face. But the casting of the director’s younger brother echoes the participation of two siblings in the contest—one as sponsor, the other (Aurelien Recoing from Laurent Cantet’s Time Out, in the movie’s most unnerving performance) as Sebastien’s determined foe. Word comes from Bilge Ebiri at the Nerve Film Lounge that Gela Babluani is already working on the Hollywood remake. Looks like somebody made it to the finals.