Under the Seinewhen the ridiculous drowns
The profound disappointment is barely tempered by the rare laughter – of embarrassment – that it provokes Under the Seine. And this is a shame. While Netflix’s “original” French cinema can boast of several very honest proposals and some objective successes in recent years (Bullet lost, Oxygen, Nouveau richeetc.), the underwater horror film directed by Xavier Gens was in fact enough to make your mouth water.
A casting led by the devoted actress Bérénice Bejo and Nassim Lyes, protagonist of the brutal and jubilant Farang by Xavier Gens himself – very funny Nouveau riche -, a synopsis as intriguing as it is promising with this shark settling in the Seine, while the triathlon world championships are being prepared there… Everything seemed to come together to create, at first glance, a true genre film – Xavier Gens knows how do it: a “serious” film about sharks that would scare and delight with a unique spectacle in the French cinema landscape. Alas, we hadn’t actually seen one even a film of this caliber failed for a while.
A Netflix movie about toothless sharks (or ideas)
There are ways to do this Under the Seine, who was able to film in the heart of Paris and film his aquatic sequences in the swimming pool of the largest aquatic studio in Europe, in Belgium. The prop makers also worked hard to deliver an often, but not always, successful representation of the sharks in the film, between animatronics and CGI. It’s still…
However, according to the valid principle – an apex predator is found where it absolutely should not – Xavier Gens and his co-writers Yannick Dahan, Maud Heywang and Yaël Langmann develop nothing. There is the story of Sophia (Bérénice Bejo), her traumatic past which connects it to the shark and which offers an interesting introduction. And then, nothing more. His sadness, his suffering, his wound, his probable desire for revenge, nothing is exploited to become a real dramatic source of the film’s problems. There is the story of Adil (Nassim Lyes), commander of the river police. He is a former soldier with an equally painful past. Likewise, we come to care too quickly.
There is also the story of Mika (Léa Leviant), a young environmental activist whose appearance we don’t know totally annoying of the character comes from the desire to write, or because she and her environment are unconsciously caricatured to the extreme. Rebellious attitude, colored hair, installed in a squat illuminated by neon lights where computers work and influencer-activist-hackers get busy, she and her friends embody the youth and form of moral conscience of the film in aberrant clichés. Obviously, the generation of authors of Under the Seine he has difficulty perceiving that of his children…
Place a few here and there jumping is scary and scary music isn’t enough. The ideas of Under the Seine, if there are any, they drown each other in a whirlwind of dirty water. There is no main character Under the Seineor Bérénice Bejo should have been but he plays too badly – not the least of the surprises that an actress of her talent reserves – for being anything but transparent. A failure of direction? In all cases the point of view is indeterminate. Are we following you, Sophia? Or Adil, or Mika, or even the detestable mayor played with energetic histrionics by Anne Marivin, probably hybridization of migraine by Anne Hidalgo and Valérie Pécresse? We do not know.
Netflix: The end of this excellent shark movie will make your head spin
Under the Seine don’t avoid the French “problem”.
What we know, however, and what is striking, is that this Netflix film fails by repeating the chronic mistake of French genre cinema: refuse to take yourself seriously. While Under the Seine initially presented as a violent and dramatic thriller, it quickly becomes a poor action comedy and a terrible parody of itself.
For example, while sharks feast in the catacombs, one of Adil’s men falls into the water. When his arm has already been torn off, Adil shouts to him from the edge of the pool: “Give your hand! The other hand!“. It’s not very original, but it’s funny. The problem is that it’s mostly ridiculous, because this humor largely contradicts the seriousness that, in our opinion, Xavier Gens wanted to instill in his story. More Under the Seine advances, the more it sinks into indeterminate waters. Survival in the first degree as Jaws ? Slapstick action comedy? Environmental drama? Z series in line with Sharknado ?
We won’t reveal here a final cameo that will be talked about, at least among French subscribers, but we can indicate that it confirms that the film has finally abandoned any idea of verisimilitude, coherence, and even the idea of offering an emotion. And it’s there Under the Seine becomes truly hostile, if until then we had been able to try to forgive him for his mistakes: he seems to say he has none nothing to worry about. Nothing that cares about its history, about shark cinema, about the sensations of genre cinema and, ultimately, nothing that cares about its viewers.
Quite the opposite of what was proposed for example Bullet lost or, soon to the cinema and in a closer genre, the film To survive. Two films that, with fewer means, sincerely want to make much, much more cinema.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
