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Out of this World (Hors du Monde)
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Out of this World (Hors du Monde)

This is a very difficult film on a few levels as it shifts around with mood and perspective playing with the audiences’ sensitivities whether to genuinely make a point, enlighten or manipulate.
Léo (Kevin Mischel) is a very lonely man. A composer who hasn’t had the best of luck to the extent that he lives out of a car that doubles up as home, studio and cab. Taking a woman home who asks him to turn off his own music, infuriates him, leading to her messy death.
Picking up the deaf and mute Amélie (Aurelia Poirier) to take her to a dance studio Léo becomes infatuated when he sees her dance. But having no friends or social skills he’s at a loss as to how to approach her. He solves this by kidnapping a woman from a bar for a night who gives him some basic advice which he takes and he’s grateful enough not to kill her, just threaten her if she tells anyone.
Armed with this knowledge he asks and takes Amélie to a park where he gets involved in fight between a couple beating a man to a pulp.
Out of this World is a grim, bleak film and writer and director Marc Fouchard has purposely set out to posit a number of questions, leaving the viewer to work out the answers.
They all centre on Léo and if there is room for sympathy as victim of gross abuse and neglect by his mother. That could hardly be contentious what is much more difficult is if that abuse can be used as a reason for his crimes admonishing him of responsibility? Fouchard however doesn’t overplay this.
However mental illness is an issue with Léo talking to himself, dancing in carparks. At a disco he gets so caught up in the music – flailing arms and stabbing actions – that he clears the dancefloor, in one of the film’s most intense scenes. Music is at the centre of Léo’s life, though he’s only truly inspired after he’s killed a woman, tapping on the keyboard with his bloodied fingers.
But Léo clearly has some distinction of what is right and wrong with his intervention in the park, albeit completely over the top. So that would suggest that he has some element of control over his actions which should then condemn him as a misogynistic killer.
I will also toss in that maybe Fouchard isn’t actually trying to say anything at all and this could be just another example of the French extreme and nihilistic cinema.
Technically the film is fine with fantastic use of sound, space and a score by Cyesm and Pascal Boudet. The performers to the person excellent and for all the aforementioned problems Mischel is outstanding in a complex role, as is Poirier whose pain is internal, beautifully expressed via her face and dance.
Out of This World will be available on digital platforms from 5 December.