La tour
Director: Guillaume Nicloux
Writer: Guillaume Nicloux
Cast: Angèle Mac, Hatik, Ahmed Abdel Laoui, Kylian Larmonie, Merveille Nsombi, Nicolas Pignon, Igor Kovalsky, Marie Rémond, Judith Williquet
Part of: SLASH 1/2 Filmfestival
Seen on: 5.5.2023

Content Note: animal cruelty, sexualized violence

Plot:
Assitan (Angèle Mac) is one of many inhabitants of a large high-rise filled with small apartments and poor people. Things are going okay for them until they wake one morning to find their building surrounded by a black fog that swallows everyone who leaves the building. Or every part of somebody stuck outside. in their fight for survival under the new circumstances, things quickly turn violent.

La tour has an interesting set-up and aesthetic, but the longer things went on, the less I was into it. Instead I found myself starting to question the plausibility of everything – and it’s not the kind of film where this should be questioned.

Just to be clear, I know that this is not a film that is meant to be logical or plausible. It makes no sense to ask how they would still have electricity or water if they are completely cut off from the outside. It makes even less sense to wonder about the sheer number of pets that aren’t neutered and how long it would take to breed them for food (or what the pets would be eating themselves). [As a pet lover, the film really is a big challenge to watch.] The film is not interested in that, it’s not about that. As the audience, we’re supposed to go along with that and just accept it. It’s all about the consequences of being cut off, having no real rules and apparently no other moral compass, either.

That I found myself asking all these plausibility questions was thus a sign, for me, that the film had lost me. And I think the overarching problem for me was this utter sense of hopelessness that permeates the film. It’s a movie all about how horrible people are if left to their own devices (when, in fact, there is plenty of evidence that people tend to come together in times of need; that social behavior is much more inherent in humans than anti-social behavior). And I am just not interested anymore in this kind of pessimistic provocation. I would much rather explore humanity’s potential for goodness.

Anyhoo, the film starts off interesting enough. The way the fog hits the building, the first reactions, even the brown-gray color palette (usually not really my taste): it all made me curious about Nicloux’s vision for this world and characters. It’s just unfortunate that the vision was just so nihilistic and pointless in the end. It’s a film that knows nothing but violence, and that is just as one-sided and empty as seeing only the good things.

Summarizing: not for me.