The latest production Netflix had enough to put water in the mouth: a shark film, in the Seine, in the context of the Olympic Games and all filmed by Xavier Gens... A combo to say the least intriguing! Unfortunately, the result did not bite him from his promises.
From castagna to squales
A scientist (Berenice Bejo) closely studies the populations of mako sharks in the middle of the plastic container off the Hawaii coast. If their bugs marked with GPS trackers seem to evolve more and more strangely, their mission stops sharp while a tragic diving accident involving the squales decimates a good part of the team. While she thought she had abandoned the study of these voracious fish, they violently resurfaced in her life: one of her marked sharks is in the middle of Paris, in the Seine!
Xavier People is definitely a great French name. Since Border(s) up to and including Farang which he had loved at NIFFF, he slalomed between genres with a taste of crafting always sharp. In addition, when this project Netflix was announced, it had enough to tickle our curiosity! After Year of shark of the Boukherma brothers – very friendly but far from perfect – the expectations of a pure genre film staring at the side of the B series aroused the public. The Commission Netflix quickly reframed the hype : the film will not be a Z that is working but a serious film... All that remained was to wait until June 5th for his opinion, and God knows if the hopes have been put to rest!
Green movie?
Just like the last hexagonal shark movie we just mentioned, Under the Seine is part of an ecological context. The feature film opens on the plastic continent, we follow there biologists of conservation, the "beast" is considered more rationally than usual... And there is no doubt that, in addition to the moral background that makes it very difficult to make a "bestiole" film where they are decomposed in a gourmand without justifying it by a prior anthropogenic disruption, Xavier Gens has sincere ecological ambitions. He himself describes this film as « a blockbuster with an ecological consciousnesse ». The one that regularly displays in the colors of the association Sea Shepherd So wanted to entertain us, but also to have us reflect on the ecological issue. Problem? Under the Seine is as much on the side of entertainment as on its more theoretical side...
In fact, this shark race in the Seine is divided into three teams rotating around the character of Berenice Bejo: a young environmental activist (whose ultra-cliched characterization will be kept) and his association, a team of police officers (where one finds the main actor of the Farang, Nassim Lyes) and a Mayor Hidalgo-like embodied by Anne Marivin, so caricatural that she becomes more embarrassing than funny.
If one can already grommet against a direction of more than questionable actors and a cutting made at the chainsaw, Under the Seine in the trope of the horror movie where each of the characters makes the worst possible decisions. Seen and revised, this choice implies above all that its characters become increasingly detestable as the film advances. And this is all the more true for the eco-friendly activist, absolutely detestable. From then on, the viewer finds himself torn between what he knows about People's desires (and convictions) and what is happening on the screen before the eyes.
Series B?
But let's leave this serious angle aside... One could then give up entirely to a deprecated but generous film, drawing tripotate with well sharpened teeth, grumulous water of blood and bursting of tripails. Second problem, Under the Seine Don't propose that at all... The gore is almost constantly out-of-field, the crado scenes (this accident eaten by the shark and raised to the surface) embedded in subliminal images in a montage hardly worthy of an episode of NCIS and exciting ideas (a shark in flooded catacombs) never crystallized.
Limp feature film, never knowing what foot to dance on, Under the Seine ends up sampling his potential for generous bisserie while missing his serious and ecological vein on the whole line. The state of the film (CGI more than approximate, incomprehensible editing and cutting, generally disgracious photography) would almost make us wonder if its release was not a little hasty to stick to an inflexible calendar (the imminent arrival of the O.J.?)... In short, another big disappointment made in Netflix.
10 minutes is the time I held. The duration of the bulk intro. I thought life was too short to waste time watching this thing.
hahahaha
Well, you did well.
Frankly, I had too much fun to catch up with these days. Even if it always intrigues a shark movie.
[...] Under the Seine, the shark movie that does not bite? by Mr Wilkes [...]