Lemming (15)
- Consumer Advice: Contains strong language, moderate violence and suicide
- Run time: 2 hours 10 mins
- Language: French
- Genre: Drama
- Release date: 14th April 2006
- Starring: Laurent Lucas, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Charlotte Rampling
- Directed by: Dominik Moll
- Official Website: http://www.diaphana.fr/fiche.php?pkfilms=131
- Distributor: Artificial Eye
Plot Synopsis
Shifting, like Moll's earlier Harry, He's Here to Help, from deliciously droll comedy to dark and chillingly suspenseful drama, this offbeat cautionary fable charts the dramatic changes that befall the hitherto seemingly perfect marriage of a hotshot gadget inventor (Laurent Lucas) and his home-maker wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) after they invite his new boss (André Dussolier) and his wife (Charlotte Rampling) to dinner. The guests' embarrassingly vicious, even sordid spat in front of their hosts creates tension, but that's as nothing compared to the aftermath of an unforeseen and unwelcome adulterous come-on. Meanwhile - even more unexpectedly - the Scandinavian rodent of the title is discovered blocking the S-bend beneath the faintly complacent young couple's sink... The most obvious cinematic reference points for Moll's imaginative black comedy-cum-thriller are Hitchcock and Buñuel; a more useful point of comparison, however, might be the artist René Magritte. The sombre blues and greys, the strange interplay of day and night and the brooding mountainscapes, all reminiscent of the painter's work, give the movie the unsettling quality of a waking dream, an impression reinforced and enhanced by the inventive use of sound and music. All this, together with exemplary perfomances, make for a very divertingly nightmarish experience.