Fishbulbs went down to the woods today.... (Deep In The Woods (DVD))

Member Name: Fishbulb

Product:	Deep In The Woods (DVD)
Date:	21/08/03 (193 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful photography, Beautiful actors, Lots of shagging

Disadvantages: Shagging was a little distracting, A bit predictable, Children scare Fishbulbs

…and we had a big surprise. For you see, following on from our recent visit to Spain I have made a conscious decision to practice my Spanish skills more frequently and to learn to speak more Spanish in general. Mr Fishbulb kindly (and proudly) bought this DVD home from the local library to quench my desire to watch a Spanish-spoken film. Although this film was the (silver) winner of the 2000 Catalonian Film Festival, and it was also nominated for the 2001 Catalonian Film Festival. He failed to miss one small detail. It’s in FRENCH! D’oh!


Anyway, not to let a language get in the way of things we decided it was at least worth giving it a watch. This won’t contain any spoilers, cause spoilers suck, but lets have a brief synopsis of the film and chat about that yeah?


Deep in the Woods had a fairly typical horror plot, nothing too out of the ordinary. The opening scene shows a glamorous, elegant woman reading the tale of Little Red Riding Hood to a childs bed. This isn’t to say the child isn’t there, but the focus of the scene is on the woman and the extravagant surroundings. I thought this scene was shot in a particularly clever manner as without seeing the child you’re drawn into focussing on the serenity luxury and the calmness of the setting. She presents the child with a doll of Little Red Riding Hood (just to confirm the point if you hadn’t already missed it in the title and from the fact that she’s telling the tale) and then……..well, I won’t tell you, I’ll let you watch for yourself.


A group of five young (attractive of course) actors are invited to a Château to perform their version of Little Red Riding Hood for the French millionaire Baron Axel de Ferson. The château itself is the most amazing building and as you would expect from a foreign film, features a great deal in a few of the more arty shots throughout. When they arrive, they
are greeted at the edge of the grounds by Stephane (the gamekeeper) and proceed up to the house itself. After letting themselves in, they seem rather pleased with themselves and congratulate each other on finally being paid a big wedge of money for their performance. Just to add good measure to the plot, there’s a rapist who has in the previous day raped and brutally murdered a couple of young girls in the surrounding woods.


Baron Axel de Ferson is a strange old chap. He has a small boy living with him. The actors were hired to perform for the boy’s birthday, but strangely enough there are no other guests. Just the boy and the Baron.


Things are all going quite well and we are treated to a performance of Little Red Riding Hood that wouldn’t look out of place in Wonderland with Alice. This is the turning point of the film when events start to become a bit peculiar.


At dinner, the Baron’s interest in the main actor becomes apparent. He comments on the boy’s physique. When the others laugh he requests the boy accompany him to his room. The Baron is in a wheelchair and needs help getting into bed and also requests a bedtime tale too from our main man! We also at this point centre on the insistent, spoilt nature of the Baron. He is a man who is used to getting his own way, not a good people person.


Sex plays a huge part in this film and for the best part is focussed on more than the plot. Two of the actors are lesbians. A couple are dating. The gamekeeper has taken an unnerving interest in one of the lesbians and the Baron has taken a shine to our leading actor (a boy). I found this all quite confusing as with the added labour of reading the subtitles I had no idea who was supposed to be with who, but it seems that everyone was shagging everyone else and although I’m not against a bit of good old fashioned nooky in a film, I felt that it was too distracting and not
particularly well-explained. The characters just seemed to be shagging, but there was no background to their actions. I think that in general, they were difficult to believe anyway. One girl talks only to her lesbian partner through sign language, yet at several points her partner refers to her as ‘not being deaf’ when others shout to be heard. This had no explanation and the plot would have benefited from some reasoning. The young boy also seems to turn up at every murder and never says a word. Frankly, he was the most frightening thing in the film. There is some background fodder in the wind-up to the film about his character, yet I still found myself questioning - why?


We were about 50 minutes into the film before the first killing and to be honest I was actually quite bored then. Sub-plots and scene-setting are all a great thing, but when two thirds of the film is spent doing them and you’re still really non-the-wiser or more precisely you don’t care what happens then it’s a bit of a shame really.


Now, I’m quite an open-minded person, but recently while on holiday, we sat and watched the Spanish news mid-afternoon and I was quite shocked by the sheer bluntness of it all. Two particular stories caught my attention. The first of which showed a fairground ride with a car missing from it, which was being held up by two men. This scene then changed to one of a wall with a rather large bloodstain on it and blood on the floor beneath it. If this story wasn’t enough to shock me, there followed an account of what I assume was a body found in a town, being carried by a government official in a black plastic sack. The blood was pouring out of the bag and onto the street. I was quite horrified, but this is the norm out there. This European attitude was present throughout the film with the odd naked woman, gory killings and general debauchery.


Gradually the numbers diminish i
n a series of strange killings. These are all focused on the ‘Wolf’ from the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Conveniently the actors brought a great Wolf costume with them, which aids the killer/killers (not giving away anything here ;o) ) in giving them a disguise. This aspect of the story was outstanding, the parallels behind the gruesome fable and the film were superb. The seemingly most normal character visually shows signs of madness as the film progresses. This was believable and a great window into the writing behind the film. I suspect that the original story to this film is amazing, and perhaps the characters are explained more fully in it. It is definitely something I would like to read. Although there is an air of been there done it with the whole plot. Pretty people, creepy settings, serial murderer/rapist, and descent in to madness. Yawn!


If you’re still interested in watching this film, here’s who made it, who’s in it. Etc etc.

Starring
Clotilde Courau
Clement Sibony
Alexia Stresi
Vincent Lecoeur
Maud Buquet

Tartan Video’s are responsible for this (www.tartanvideo.com)
Directed by Lionel Delplanque
Produced by Oliver Delbosc & Marc Missonnier
Original Music Jerome Coullet
Certification 18

DVD bits
Video Aspect Ratio Anamorphic 2:35:1
Feature Length 84 (LONG) minutes
Language French
Subtitles English
Disc Format PAL DVD 5
Region Code 0


The special features on the disc include star and director Filmographies. Alan Jones film notes. Tartan Video trailers and that is about that. The features were about as interesting as the film, which was dire. For a film that was compared to The Blair Witch Project, it was, in my humble one, feeble and inadequate.


Maybe you think I’m being a bit uncharitable, and to be honest, initially I was extremely disappointed that it wasn’t
in Spanish. But even if it were performed in Martian I think this film was about as guided as a blind-person with a guide-ferret instead of a standard issue dog. The characters were as believable as politicians and the plot was as untwisted as a non-twisty thing (sorry, on a bit of a rant, but ran out of words)


A disappointing selection from Mr Fish, but bless his little heart for making the effort. In our house I’m renowned for picking the worst film in the DVD shop, but this choice undoes all my bad selections and there’s been a few.


There are plenty of most excellent foreign films out there and if you’re not already a fan, I wouldn’t recommend watching this in the first instance. I personally would recommend breaking yourself in with something that crosses the Hollywood/European barrier for example, the prequel to Desperado. El Mariachi. This was also the winner of a festival award (The Sundance Festival) and was directed by Robert Rodriguez and on the whole, although a different genre, a much better example of a foreign language film.

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