eurotrash horror
Like “La Haine” before it, “Sheitan” treats of the deracinated youths of the Parisien banlieues, who, in the absence of any purpose in life, venerate the twin deities of sex and violence.
TEXT FRANCIS MERSON feedback
After being kicked out of a nightclub, three young men of various ethnicities are invited by teenage temptress Eve (Roxane Mesquida) back to her maison de campagne. On arrival, they are met by creepily rustic gardener Joseph, played by an unrecognizable Vincent Cassel. It is the night before Christmas, and the allusion that the three immigrant kids are the wise men of orient is one of many droll biblical references which offset the faithlessness of the heroes. A pall is cast over the gathering when it turns out that Joseph has made a pact with the devil, which bodes rather poorly for the garcons. Despite being as callous a bunch of hoods as you could imagine, the kids do gain our sympathy, as their bravado is a thin veil covering their angst and vulnerability. They are representatives of the new France, where aggression is the sole vehicle for emotion, be it affection or contempt. The violence and abundant nastiness that kicks in when “Sheitan’s” plot gets off the ground is put forward as a corollary of France’s cultural and racial tension, although debutant director Kim Chapiron remains firmly above the fray. In his vision, the patois-speaking hicks of la France profonde and the verlan-speaking hooligans of the Paris suburbs are pretty much as bad as each other. Although “Sheitan” has been described as shocking, the film shocks for all the right reasons: not because it contains explicit scenes that other films don’t— a bull-terrier being masturbated, for one — but because it shows facets of human behavior which are fairly hard to palate, and provoke a genuine feeling of horror. |
