TIFF 2021: Inexorable
TIFF 2021Director Fabrice Du Welz' Inexorable is one part haunted house horror and one part erotic thriller. While both are commendable with each angle of genre thrilling and immersive in their own right, sadly, the two thematics of genre ultimately fail to collide and incite or elicit emotive immersion.
Breaking the feature down into its two-part genre piece, the erotic thriller is undeniably the weakest and lacks depth and interest that the whole feature relies on to create that latter back end of being a horror. Inexorable is erotic to a point but never sensual in its immersion, with a more heavy and darker substance brooding. Granted, this is not Basic Instinct and more so a straight-faced thriller; however, the feature is too timid and lacks venom to showcase these sequences needed to depict abuse and power.
One aspect is to subconsciously infer to the audience the thematics at play but also to further the narrative’s undertones and foreshadowing of the eventual reveal – which is equally as flat. This power play between the characters played by Benoît Poelvoorde and Alba Gaïa Bellugi is compelling enough, but the tension between the two is little more than verging on the definition of sufficient, with the screenplay from the writer-director with co-writers Joséphine Darcy-Hopkins and Aurélien Molas unable to must up an engaging degree of the narrative present. Their evolution never feels organic or remotely believable, and Hopkins' has very little to interact with Mélanie Doutey, the actors’ on-screen partner, and while that can be explained away in the feature – consciously suggesting a breakaway developing – it does very little to entice the audience to care about said strain on the family at hand.
Furthermore, the eroticism brought forward is marred with these very undertones that are not developed to a sufficient degree in the feature’s screenplay. Due to this lack of depth, certain specifics and details evoke a sense of being tone-deaf and projecting somewhat dangerous stereotypes. Alas, never to a disturbing or ugly degree but one that is severely underdeveloped. This first hour is pure build up regarding the story, but nothing of note is ever particularly interesting to propel the audience to gravitate to the material at hand. Certain characters and conventions are set up but are merely surface-level developments for the film to drop and head straight into a genre piece.
This is where the last half hour of pure genre – particularly horror – comes to play and undoubtedly crafts a darker and more entertaining story, but the eclectic nature of proceedings comes a little too late for the audience to truly find interest in this story. It crafts chaos, immersion, and thrills but for what is comprised of only just a few minutes of genuinely engaging footage.
Alas, Inexorable is too little too late with a running time of one hundred minutes and just a shade of such being the compelling material the audience has waited to see. Thankfully, the feature is shot rather superbly by cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, which does major damage control in order to maintain a connective relationship with the material at hand. That being said, it does not quite save what is otherwise a prolonged and underwhelming genre feature that leaves too much to be desired before the chaotic but well-achieved climax.
