Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Alexis Bruchon
Starring: Paul Bruchon
Cellphones have had a detrimental effect on movies. No, I'm not talking
about those annoying plonkers who can't put their phones down for five
seconds and insist on constantly texting while at the cinema, turning
the average auditorium into something resembling a Scorpions concert.
I'm talking about how cellphones have been integrated into movies
themselves. If you're making a horror movie or a thriller, you
inevitably face the question of how to get around the inconvenience of
your protagonist being able to call or text for help, usually dispensed
in awkward fashion by having characters complain about a lack of
coverage, even if they're in downtown New York.
And then we have filmmakers who have embraced texting and implement it
into their storytelling. I think the first time I saw text messages
appear on the screen was in the pilot episode for BBC's
Sherlock. It was a novelty then but it's become an over-used tool now, and no
matter how graphically fancy you make it, watching people send text
messages back and forth just isn't cinematic.
That's the problem with French writer/director Alexis Bruchon's
debut The Woman with Leopard Shoes. It initially teases us the sort of challenging premise that the likes
of Hitchcock or De Palma might revel in, but cheats us by devolving into
a stream of text messages. You know how in the silent era some
filmmakers just didn't have the skill to tell a story with pictures and
so peppered their movies with so many caption cards that you felt like
you were reading a book rather than watching a movie? Same thing here,
but with text messages.
The setup is certainly tasty. A burglar (Paul Bruchon) is hired
by a mysterious woman to break into the home of a prominent lawyer and
steal a small wooden box from his study. Blindfolded, our anti-hero
doesn't see the woman's face, identifying her only by her distinctive
leopard print shoes.
When the burglar breaks in, he retrieves the box but finds an unwanted
surprise in the form of a dead man stuffed into a closet. Just as he's
about to flee the scene, a swarm of people arrive in the house. It seems
the lawyer is throwing a well-attended party. Hiding out in the study,
the burglar plots his escape and uncovers a conspiracy in the
process.
This initially intriguing premise is laid out in spirited fashion by
Bruchon. It seems we're in for essentially a silent movie, and Bruchon
presents his anti-hero's POV in the manner of a Tom and Jerry cartoon,
only showing us the feet of any other characters that enter and exit the
narrative. Bruchon has set himself as much of a challenge as that which
he poses his protagonist, but ultimately he's unable to sustain our
interest. The burglar is a blank cipher – we know as much about him as
we do the thief from those old Milk Tray ads – and so it's difficult for
us to care about his predicament. It doesn't help that Bruchon dispenses
information in the dullest way imaginable, as the burglar rummages
through documents for written down clues (who prints out their
emails?).
But The Woman with Leopard Shoes really collapses when
the titular femme fatale enters the study and writes down her cellphone
number with an instruction for the burglar to "text only". For the rest
of the film we're left to watch an endless back and forth barrage of
text messages as the plot and its various unimpactful twists and turns
are literally spelled out before our eyes.
Despite clocking in at a mere 80 minutes, Bruchon's storytelling is so
laboured that his movie feels twice that length. There's a potentially
cracking thriller in this premise, but it would require a filmmaker with
more visual invention than Bruchon offers here, and it would probably
need to take place in a pre-cellphone era.
