I know what you're thinking. You looked at the title of this piece, saw the French title and thought, "there goes Paul again, recommending another French movie. Who wants to bet that this one's existential and deliberately paced, and full of observations and death and social class?" And the thing is, you'd more or less be right. But Les Revenants has something most of those movies don't have:
Zombies. Do I have your attention now?
Why I missed it: Actually, most people missed this movie. After playing at numerous festivals during 2004 and 2005 (including Cannes, Venice and Toronto), it never received a proper theatrical release on our shores. Eventually, it was unceremoniously released on DVD, and I wasn't even aware of its existence until my friend Jason, an unapologetic zombie movie nut, recommended it to me. Well Jason, when you're right, you right. And this time, you were right.
Why I should have known: Les Revenants was Robin Campillo's first effort as a director, but his other work was familiar to me, having co-written and edited numerous films by the talented filmmaker Laurent Cantet. Of particular note is his work on Time Out, which wouldn't seem to be similar to Les Revenants but showed Campillo skilled at mining existential unease, a skill that would serve him well in his directorial debut.
Why I ended up kicking myself: While Les Revenants is a movie about zombies, it's like no zombie movie I've ever seen. Even the zombies themselves are different, neither the lumbering flesh-eaters of classic zombie fare nor the running snarling beasties of more modern genre incarnations. In many ways, it's difficult to tell the "returnees" (as the film calls them from the humans who never died. Even the film's opening shot of thousands of returnees walking out of a cemetery looks like it could just as easily be showing mourners departing a funeral. Aside from a body temperature difference of roughly five degrees and some slowness in their mental processes, the returnees walk and talk like any other human. They fit in fairly well in society, with many of them returning to the workforce.
One of the subtexts of the zombie-movie genre is the idea that the zombies were once our loved ones, and Campillo's film makes this idea explicit. Some of the most fascinating scenes in the film show the different ways in which the living deal with the return of their dearly departed. Some of them are overcome with emotion, such as the parents whose child has returned to them, but others are more conflicted, like Rachel, played by Géraldine Palihas. Rachel's husband Mathieu died several years previously in a car accident, and it's fairly clear she's had a hard time getting over his death. After Mathieu returns, Rachel ignores the fact as long as he can until he finds her and works his way back into her life.
However, it becomes clear that the returnees aren't the same people they once were. Those of working age are given jobs, but while Mathieu returns to his former engineering firm, he can't function at his former level and is put to work in a factory. The returnees' difficulties with communication make a number of people uneasy, and by and large they're treated as second-class citizens. In addition, the returnees are a restless bunch, wandering in the daytime and leaving their houses by night to attend mysterious meetings. What could they be planning?
Campillo sort of answers that question in the final third of the film, although the returnees plans and motivations aren't particularly clear (escape? Sabotage? Recruitment?). Much more fascinating is the way the film's relationships play out near the end. The parents of the returned child disagree on how to treat him- while the father dotes on his son, his wife is growing increasingly freaked out by his behavior. And Rachel, who had been reluctant to welcome Mathieu back into her life, becomes increasingly devoted to him, often to the detriment of her own well-being.
Despite the zombie storyline, Les Revenants is not a gorefest. There are no violent deaths in the film, much less the bloody disembowelments we've grown to expect from the genre. Campillo's film is subtler than that, depending more on the subtle existential dread that comes from finding that someone you love isn't quite the way he used to be. With Les Revenants, Campillo has announced himself as a filmmaker to watch.
