L’Enfer | Review

With a family in pieces, Tanovic lets the viewers reconstruct the puzzle.

Penned by Krzystof Piesiewicz and the late Krzystof Kieslowski, L’Enfer (Hell) demonstrates how memory, attachment and lies serve as tools of protection and in the worst of cases, destruction. While Tom Tykwer’s Heaven demonstrated that with great odds comes hope, the second of a trilogy of films that will eventually conclude with Purgatory is modeled by stories of broken hearts and broken families. A drastic deviation from his break out international hit No Man’s Land, Danis Tanovic’s sophomore feature shows great poise in direction. Working with a multitude of themes, Tanovic’s sophisticated style in story-telling and in visually expression of ideas makes this a delightful watch for those who like heavier, emotionally-wrenching European, Bergman-like dramas.

The film’s opening shot of a baby bird pushing out its potential un-hatched siblings from high above nest is a precursor for the cruelty of nature that it so empathically showcased in this perfectly toned and well-devised screenplay. Heavy on the metaphors, the film revisits this crowded nest sequence altering the viewer’s perception and the film’s equation. Attempting to do the right thing can sometimes be the seed of auto-destruction best explored in how a patriarch does the unthinkable, in how the mother regresses into a life of solitude, and how it affects and then repeats itself in the lives of three grown sisters. Amplified by a power cast of French actresses in Emmanuelle Beart, Karin Viard and Marie Gillain who are welded together not only by blood but by shared traumatic experiences of their childhood, Tanovic uses provocative flashbacks to explore the nature of the life-changing moment but the flashback also serves to show how untruths tend to create a pattern later on in adulthood.

Preparing a tonic that gives the film a cold look and feel, Tanovic masterfully divides the stories. Each sister is examined with a microscope it allows the viewer to understand that the eldest sister walks with her crucifix on her back, that the most successful sister is a psychological mess and that the youngest of the three repeats the pain without a morsel of consciousness – it’s a radical yet truthful observation that commences as a tale of the human condition but ends with personal disintegration. Particularly strong here is the lighting and the moving camera that captures the internal origins of an unwelcoming Paris, it captures the void when relationships don’t work out the way they were meant to. Clearly Kieslowski is an influence in more than just the story department, but in the film’s aesthetics too.

The film’s pacing makes for a strong case as to why viewers might not necessarily feel astounded by the final revelations; there is no responding puzzle or code to be broken in the connections between characters and the distinction between the past and the present. Some are destined to be doomed – of course it helps if you believe in destiny – the narrative inclusion of metaphors and allegories (such as a school project based on Medea, a character from a Greek tragedy who took revenge on her husband by taking the lives her offspring) adds more of a weight to the contemporary stance. Tanovic is clearly on a path to an exciting body of work with L’Enfer he creates an accomplished treat for euro-cinema film buffs, for anyone who overuses the word ‘faith’ and for fans of the other Kieslowski trilogy of Red, White and Blue.

Viewed in original French language.

Rating 3.5 stars