Frank

I watched 13 Tzameti at the Kansas Union last Monday. It's a French thriller that's part of the University's French film festival. If you're searching for something wild and ingenious, even sick and twisted, you've come to the right place.

Nothing I've seen has rivaled the amount of suspense contained in this black and white film by new director Gela Babluani. It built and progressed in intensity like some abnormally dark Sigur Rós song: it starts quiet and slow, with some small melodies of plot and intrigue here and there. Halfway through, however, it builds until finally the whole band is in full, cymbals crashing and guitars and synthesizers wailing an intense and driving melody.

Sebastien, a working class twenty-three year old, is re-roofing a house when the owner dies. He discovers the owner was in a crime ring and, in a seemingly meaningless decision, decides to follow through with one of the dead man's jobs. He travels to Paris by train, sleeps in a specified hotel and is woken up in the middle of the night by a phone call. Things start to build from there. You get a few cues that something ominous will happen, but nothing prepares you for what the main character stumbles into. By the time he realizes what he's joined, it's too late.

I sat on the edge of my seat for nearly 40 minutes sweating out hostile chemicals I didn't know my body could produce. This reaction was achieved in part by the fact I expected to walk into a cute "let's fall in love in Paris" movie with an accordion-driven soundtrack. I had instead stumbled into one of the more intense hypothetical situations ever presented to me.

13 Tzameti succeeds in creating suspense because it takes the necessary time to invest in the main character. You see him as he goes about his life. You meet his poor but tight-knit family. You get a feel for who he is and how he functions. And when he gets in over his head and he becomes locked into a deadly game, you are locked with him.

The first half of the movie has a dark clammy feel, similar to that of "The Machinist": the dialogue is sparse, Sebastien is quiet and enigmatic and the world is bleak and indifferent. Babluani keeps the themes easily within the bleak existential range, where each decision or plot twist requires no justification.

While black and white, nothing in the film seems to be that way. Stuff just happens, and there doesn't seem to be any sense of what's right or wrong.

If you're looking for a movie layered with social meaning and depth, this is not the one. If you're looking for a relatively mindless high-intensity film noir, this is the ticket. And in that regard, it blows your head off.

Four out of five popcorn buckets for Ranjit.