News

The Killer

• Written and directed by Cédric Anger
• Starring Gilbert Melki and Grégoire Colin
• Classification: NA
•  

In the long French tradition of film critic-turned-auteur comes The Killer, a modest but well-made film noir from former Cahier du Cinema writer Cédric Anger. Set in the anonymous office buildings and banal suburbs of Paris in the snowy gloom of the pre-Christmas season, the movie follows the grim pas de deux between a young hit man, Kopas, and a middle-aged investor, Léo, who share a peculiar bond.

A contender as France's best debut film last year, The Killer is a calling-card film that doesn't dazzle, but manages to impress with its discipline and strong, contrasting central performances. From the start, Léo (Gilbert Melki) is suspicious of any vaguely tough-looking guy who comes near him.

The killer, Kopas, is a blank. The actor who portrays him, Grégoire Colin ( The Dream Life of Angels), of the Johnny Depp skinny-and-scruffy school, is just another long-haired guy in a leather jacket with patchy facial hair who looks like a million would-be rock stars. He has come in from out of town, checked into a cheap hotel room and watched a secretly shot DVD of his target. To get a better look at his victim, Kopas visits him in his office, pretending to be a new investor with a lot of money to spend. Later, when Léo leaves work, we see Kopas standing in the back of the crowded elevator, watching him.

Léo, so tuned into fear, almost immediately figures out who Kopas is, but instead of running, he confronts Kopas in a parking lot. He says he wants a few more days, to carry out one more deal that will ensure his young daughter will be financially secure. Can the hit man wait until the weekend? Improbably, Kopas agrees, but with a condition: If Léo attempts to run, he will kill both him and his daughter.

The initial paranoia and tension give way to something much stranger, an existential thriller that slows down to a casual time-wasting pace. Kopas visits the sites; he eats at a low-price Mexican diner, then giggles at porn on the hotel television while drinking beer and eating nachos. One afternoon, when he comes back to the hotel, he finds a beautiful young woman (Mélanie Laurent) in the lobby of his hotel. She says she's a student and model, who has just been stood up for a casting call. He tries to pick her up and, despite his clumsy come-ons, improbably succeeds. The two end up in bed together over the next couple of days. He tells her a little about himself, a sad story about how, as a teenager, he discovered the photograph in his home he thought was his late father was, in fact, just the commercial picture that came with the frame.

In contrast, Léo lives in suburban comfort. He adores his eight-year-old daughter, but we soon learn that his relationship with his attractive, younger wife (Sophie Cattani) has been reduced to a détente. She's openly having a relationship with his former business partner, but still shares her husband's bed — and even attempts to include him in some financial skulduggery. Is she the source of his impending assassination? The director teases us with several possibilities, but, in the end, keeps critical information close to the chest until the dénouement. Anger previously co-wrote two dramas with director Xavier Beauvois ( To Mathieu and Le Petit Lieutenant), but he's definitely more a director than screenwriter here. The Killer is light on dialogue, concentrating mostly on the physical and emotional contrasts between the two characters and their worlds. On the surface, Léo, the professional salesman, is as open and affectionate as Kopas is inexpressive.

There is, of course, a twist or two, including a startling visit to a Chinese opium den, hidden on the bottom floor of a parking garage. The metaphor is a bit heavy-handed but apt: Even in our sterile, concrete-and-glass world, there are strange transactions going on below the surface.