Take Three: Cécile De France
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 11:00AM Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Cécile De France
Take One: Haute tension/Switchblade Romance (2004)
De France brings an entirely new meaning to the term ‘Final Girl’ in Alexandre Aja’s Haute tension (or, to give it its more exploitation-happy title, Switchblade Romance). Spoiler Alert: Although we see Philippe Nahon doing the relentless butchering throughout the film, it emerges toward the end that he’s merely a projection of De France’s Marie’s imagination; he’s the product of pent-up sexual urge in Marie to create a marauding male monster in her mind. It all gets very muddy before becoming incredibly bloody. We witness the farmhouse massacre (the central setting for the film) alongside Marie, and place misguided hopes onto De France to ‘save the day’. With close-cropped hair and slightly (deliberately?) awkward mannerisms suggesting ambiguous duplicity, she's a a striking presence. Some careful direction and judicious editing make the film’s ruse work and ably assist De France to communicate the exact amount of required fear. Her peril is entirely believable when she’s tucked away in a closet ostensibly watching Nahon murder the mother of the house. This high (barbed) wire is even more remarkable after the fact in retrospect. She conveys the final act slide into libido-charged maniacal force with just the right amount of desperate, perplexed kinkiness. Her’s is a three-tiered act in one: she’s victim, saviour and perpetrator. De France physically and emotionally wrenched turn works hard to cautiously hint to one aspect whilst juggling the other two. How many men in horror movies have had to spin those kinds of performance plates?