VENICE 2023 International Film Critics’ Week
Review: Vermin
by Elena Lazic
- VENICE 2023: Sébastien Vaniček’s debut feature is a more convincing survival film than a social allegory
As banlieue films now enjoy greater recognition and respect in France, particularly since the success of Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables [+see also:
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interview: Ladj Ly
film profile] followed by the operatic, Netflix-produced Athena [+see also:
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film profile] by Romain Gavras, the “genre” finds itself able to evolve in a wider set of registers. While the usual cop-centric films like The Stronghold [+see also:
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film profile] explored the banlieue as a place of fantasy, for example. Meanwhile, Sébastien Vaniček delves directly into genre cinema with Vermin [+see also:
interview: Sébastien Vaniček
film profile], a survival film at the junction of action and horror, which is screening as the closing film of the International Film Critics’ Week at this year’s Venice Film Festival
It however begins far away from the futuristic-looking Arènes de Picasso complex in the outskirts of Paris, where most of the story takes place. In a sequence that seems inspired by the opening to William Friedkin’s The Exorcist which no one ever remembers, where a priest unearths a statue of Pazuzu in the desert of norther Iraq, this prologue shows a group of men among the sand dunes capturing big spiders — one of which escapes and bites a man, with disastrous consequences.
From there, the film then transfers to the apartment complex mentioned above, where the young Kaleb (Theo Christine) adds one of those spiders to his collection of exotic animals and names her Rihanna. Kaleb is otherwise a rather typical young man from the banlieue — he even tries to make a living reselling expensive sneakers. The unexpected mix of banlieue imagery (the sneakers, the clothes, the way Kaleb and the other people he meets speak to each other) and the niche, slightly nerdy interest in exotic creatures is refreshing. But it feels more like a convenient plot device than a believable character trait, and though we know all along that the spider is soon going to escape, this makes the fateful moment less impactful than it could have been.
It takes a while before Kaleb even notices the spider gone, or learns that it is at all dangerous, and in the meantime we meet the various people in his life who all come across as mouthpieces for certain ideas and themes more than actual human beings. His sister Manon (Lisa Nykaro) wants to sell the flat that the brother and sister have just inherited, since they cannot afford to repair it. But Kaleb refuses to abandon the place that carries all his memories of their mother, echoing the dilemma of a generation that grew up in the banlieue but feels pressured to abandon it. Lila (Sofia Lesaffre) is a “municipal officer,” meaning a type of cop with little actual power, which will of course help the film’s commentary on the place of the police in the banlieue later on. On the plane of romance and personal drama, too, we find similarly broad strokes, with Kaleb in conflict with his (white) childhood best friend (Finnegan Oldfield) who was once dreaming of opening an exotic zoo with him.
Surprises are therefore to be found not in the story itself or its larger meaning — the “vermin” refers to the rapidly multiplying spiders, but also to the people of the banlieue in the language of certain right wing French politicians — but in its genre beats. Vaniček and co-writer Florent Bernard craft a satisfying crescendo of terror as the group of friends progressively discover the extent of the invasion. It isn’t long before the entire building is filled with cobwebs, and neighbours both friendly and otherwise succumb to the animals’ deadly bites. The very divided team are forced to join forces to survive, and naturally not all of them do, but the film veers away from convention in its choice of survivors. Director of photography Alexandre Jamin creates a creepy atmosphere and dynamic shots that communicate well the friends’ intense sense of panic and helplessness, and viewers with arachnophobic tendencies may well feel tiny furry legs scurrying around their skin. The style at times hints at the intensity of Gareth Evans’ The Raid or Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block [+see also:
trailer
film profile], but ultimately stays in a more down-to-earth, survival register. Although the film’s novelty is the social commentary that comes with its setting, this is not in fact its strong suit, and Vermin is at its most enjoyable as a well-made tiny (and not so tiny) monster movie.
Vermin was produced by France’s My Box Productions and Tandem Films. International sales are handled by Charades and WTFilms, and French distribution by Tandem Films.
Photogallery 09/09/2023: Venice 2023 - Miscellaneous photos
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© 2023 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it
Photogallery 08/09/2023: Venice 2023 - Vermin
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