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Rating: "Ouvre-moi ta porte... Que je t'ouvre le ventre"
This is the phrase that stands out on the poster of "À L'Intérieur", a shocking French film from 2007.
A direct phrase, with no mincing words, that instantly thrusts us into the horror at which we are left dumbfounded, shocked.
"À L'Intérieur" is a film as hard as a rock, sometimes revolting, and somewhat self-indulgent in its extreme display of violence. It is a film that scares, and really scares. Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury stage an unbearable bloodbath, built around a subject that would deeply touch even the most insensitive of human beings: the woman, the pregnancy. Seeing scissors brandished like a dagger towards the belly of a pregnant girl is horror to the nth degree, an act of desecration equivalent to urinating on the Mona Lisa or burning the reel of A Clockwork Orange.
But the beauty is in daring always, and the two French directors are not afraid to do so. In fact, they go far beyond...
From the terrifying initial sequence of the accident that disfigures protagonist Alysson Paradis (sister-in-law of Johnny Depp) and robs her of her husband's love, to the siege of the demon Béatrice Dalle, ready to do anything to achieve her goal: to tear the child from the maternal womb, at any cost, by any means. "À L'Intérieur" is a crazy mix of splatter violence and intimacy, blood and poetry, a thousand miles away from the teenage atmospheres of certain U.S.-made horrors and very close to the Nouvelle Vague for its unsettling realism. It is a film that wounds the viewer, pierces them like knife blades, testing their endurance, but at the same time, it is also capable of impressing with its lyrical moments, exaggerated close-ups, the unsettling chiaroscuro photography.
A film to love or hate, in short, with the risk of bringing our most remote fears to the surface.
(Rating: 4/4.5)
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