armagecko

As others have said, if you're looking for "Alien Hookers on the Moon" you'll be mostly disappointed - at least until you discover that beautiful Nicole Harrison puts all of those plastic blonde alien bimbos to shame. However, if you're a fan of 1960s-70s French & Italian films, you'll appreciate this awkwardly-titled indy gem for the masterpiece that it is.

Director Lustgarten (really?) anticipates the 1990s themes of teen neighbor attraction (Crush, 1993) & date rape (The Liar's Club, 1994) with a layered character study of alienation & Nabokovian attraction. This is an arthouse movie, not a romp. So expect slow pans & long pauses on ocean waves, night skies and plant life. Yet, even with limited resources, the cinematography here is top notch, exponentially better than 95% of the "original content" you'll find on Netflix or Prime.

To previous reviewers who question the believability of a lonely young girl pursuing an older neighbor, I can only say that you, my friends, are the ones who are living in a false reality. Girls know *exactly* what they're doing.

So many previous reviewers nailed it: Julie Taymor meets Bergman, yep. Nice camera work, yep. First part pretty good, yep. What they don't mention is how terrible this script is. The suspension of disbelief that must be summoned to accept that a woman - who's in therapy - going for a weekend getaway to a remote cabin with a rando date is mindboggling. The "girl talk" with friends in the museum is something that only a 15 year old virgin boy could write. The fact that the protagonist disappears for the last hour of the film should have kept this clunker on the page & off the stage. This is the kind of product one expects from ITN, not from Shudder. Three stars for acting & attempt at originality.

An advantage that American audiences have when viewing Euro films is that you regularly come across brilliant performances from actors you've never heard of. This rarely happens in Hollywood products because almost every popular American actor began as a child star. (DiCaprio, Gosling, dare I add Bale) Even the semi-talented kids get discovered & groomed early by Nickelodeon, pop music producers or the gazillion teen sitcoms, so by the time they appear on movie screens in a substantial role, you've seen their familiar faces countless times.

In Complices, we know from the start we'll see solid performances from veterans Melki & Devos, but who knew Descours & Meurisse would carry the film? And such excellent casting doesn't stop there. Even the smaller roles from Preiss, Ponsot & Kapone are on point.

I'm so tired of hearing other reviewers compare any film with a dead body to Twin Peaks. Films began with dead bodies long before David Lynch was even born. And the body that begins Complices makes Laura Palmer look as believable as Howdy Doody. Hats off to Hipaux & the effects crew for giving us a good corpse.

Mermoud & Arnold tell a simple but engaging story full of subtlety & subtext, only hinting at the character currents underneath. Watch Complices for the exquisite performances, but also to catch a glimpse of how tiny the French make their washing machines.