TIFF Report: À l’intérieur

It is Christmas Eve and four months after a car crash that claimed the life of her husband Sarah is waiting at home for her mother to come fetch her so that Sarah’s doctor may induce labor the next day. Up until this night Sarah has been trying to live a normal life, still working as a photographer, much to the chagrin of her mother. Her editor also pops by time to time to check in on here and make sure she’s all right. The peacefulness of the home is broken by a knock at the door. A lone woman at the door asks if she can come in and use the phone, her car has broken down. Ripples of anxiety begin to move through Sarah and she tries to discourage the woman from coming in. What is more troubling than the woman’s insistence on using Sarah’s phone is that she somehow knows details of Sarah’s life; her name for one, that she is alone and that her husband is dead. 

Sarah phones the police, and tries to take pictures of this aggressive woman through the living room window. The police arrive and she is nowhere to be found. The search the property but there is no one there. She must have been scared of. The police assure Sarah they will send another car around later to check up on her. What no one knows is that the strange woman has slipped into the house and waits for the police to leave and for Sarah to retire for the night before she comes to get what she wants. So begins a night of terror and torment as Sarah battles for her life and the life of her child.

How do you start to review a film that is gorgeously shot, designed and lit only watch this tiny world get torn apart and doused with gallons of blood? It is nearly a contradiction in terms to say that Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s debut film À l’intérieur is tastefully shot and composed considering how bloody and intense the film is. The house is awash in a warm glow, itself possibly symbolic of Sarah’s womb. It is somewhere warm and safe. Like her unborn daughter feels in her womb she feels safe and secure in her home, bathed in the warmth. Maury and Bustillo work with light very well in this film including one moment, that could have been inspired by a director the likes of Kurasowa Kiyoshi the way he has used light and shadow, to alert the viewer to the threat in the house. Other lighting techniques are almost Fincher-esque. But regardless of how many tags you attach to their visual creativity the only thing that matters once the blood flies is how many toe tags you will need by the end of the film.

À l’intérieur escalates at such a ferocious pace that you hardly keep up with it. It’s as scary and intense as it is bloody. Beatrice Dalle as the scissor-wielding madwoman and Alysson Paradis as Sarah give outstanding performances as one attacks with madness and the other defends the life of her unborn daughter with sheer will. To call this film bloody is an understatement. Blood flows so freely in this film you think that floodgates on the Tiber River in Virgil’s Aeneid had opened up and let loose its red torrent. À l’intérieur also boasts possibly the best money shot I have seen this year involving a head. I dare not say anymore per chance that you somehow get to see this exhilarating story of terrorizing revenge. How TWC is going to release this bloodfest without it getting tagged as NC-17 is beyond me. À l’intérieur is a bloody tour de force!