Heartbeat Detector

(Nicolas Klotz, France 2007)
Simon (Mathieu Amalric), a psychologist in the Paris subsidiary of a German multinational, is assigned to investigate the mental state of his chief executive (an impressive Michael Lonsdale, of Bond villain fame) by means of the initially bizarre ruse of reforming the old man’s string quartet. He slowly discovers dark company secrets that stretch back to the Nazi era and policies regarding ‘the Jewish question’ that not only threaten his own frail psychological well-being but also, more worryingly, his ability to function as a ‘good soldier’ in defence of his company’s corporate dream. Radical director Nicolas Klotz and his filmmaking partner Elisabeth Perceval… have managed to fashion a dystopian thriller as chilling, atmospheric and relevant as anything French cinema has produced since Godard’s Alphaville… Perceval and Klotz’s film presents a fascinating collision of two fertile recent sub-genres in French cinema - the cinema of ‘anxiety’ and those films, such as Laurent Cantet’s Human Resources, which closely examine the realities of the modern workplace. However, Heartbeat Detector is more experimental. It moves away from realism towards more expressionist cinematic stylings - notably in its uses of sound, music and non-language based communication - that, at their best, bounce delicious contemporary echoes of Clouzot’s dark misanthropy and Franju’s poetic surrealism. The price may be a certain obscurity - and an unwelcome magisterial pomposity - but there’s few movies in town as original, challenging or, possibly, upsetting.
- Wally Hammond, Time Out

Event listed by Wellington Film Society

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