I Stand Alone (film)
| I Stand Alone | |
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 Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Gaspar Noé |
| Produced by | Lucile Hadžihalilović Gaspar Noé |
| Written by | Gaspar Noé |
| Starring | Philippe Nahon Blandine Lenoir Frankye Pain Martine Audrain |
| Cinematography | Dominique Colin |
| Editing by | Lucile Hadžihalilović Gaspar Noé |
| Studio | Les Cinémas de la Zone |
| Distributed by | Rezo Films |
| Release date(s) | 16 May 1998 (Cannes Film Festival) 17 February 1999 |
| Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
I Stand Alone is a 1998 French drama film, written and directed by Gaspar Noé, and starring Philippe Nahon, Blandine Lenoir, Frankye Pain and Martine Audrain. The original French title is Seul contre tous, which means "Alone against all". The film focuses on several pivotal days in the life of a bitter former butcher as he rages against the world. The film was the director's first feature-length production, and is a sequel to his 1991 short film Carne.
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[edit] Plot
The history of the butcher is narrated through voice-over and a montage of still photographs. Orphaned at a young age and subsequently abused by a priest, he opens a butcher shop and fathers an autistic daughter with a woman who leaves him because it is not a boy. He raises his daughter while fighting his incestuous feelings for her. On the day of her first menstrual period, he sees blood on her skirt and stabs an innocent man who he thinks raped her. He is sentenced to prison and forced to sell his butcher shop to a Muslim, and his daughter is put in an institution. He has sex with his prison cellmate, but after being released, he vows to forget it happened. He gets a job working for the fat woman who owns the tavern he used to drink in. She seduces him, and she becomes pregnant. She sells her business and moves to northern France with him, promising to purchase a butcher shop. It is now 1980.
The butcher hates his life with his overbearing, overweight mistress. She backs out of her promise to open a butcher shop, forcing him to take a night watchman job at a nursing home. Along with a nurse, he witnesses an elderly patient die, and he ruminates on the pointlessness of life. He fails to capitalize on the nurse's vulnerability, but his mistress accuses him of having an affair nonetheless. He snaps and punches his mistress in the belly several times, very likely killing their unborn child, then steals a pistol and flees.
The butcher determines to feel no guilt and returns to Paris. He rents the same flophouse room where he conceived his daughter and begins looking up his old friends, but they are all too decrepit and poor to help him. The butcher's interior monologues focus on his hatred of the rich and their exploitation of the lower class. He looks for butcher jobs, but the French economy is in recession and there are no jobs in any related field. After being turned away at a slaughterhouse that once did business with his shop, the butcher decides to kill the manager. He plots the murder at a local tavern, but is ejected from the bar at gunpoint after squabbling with the owner's son. The butcher finds that he has only three bullets in his gun, and begins assigning them to each of his various enemies.
He eventually decides to see his daughter. After meeting her at the asylum in which she is a patient, he takes her back to his room and hesitates, looking at his gun. He contemplates having sex with and then killing his daughter. The movie returns to the moment of the butcher's hesitation. He puts the gun away, resolving to be good, and tearfully embraces his daughter. He then again contemplates having sex with her in the same manner as he did with her mother. Standing at a window, he unzips his daughter's jacket and begins fondling her. His interior monologue asserts that the world condemns their love only because it is too pure.
[edit] Cast
- Philippe Nahon as the butcher
- Blandine Lenoir as his daughter, Cynthia
- Frankye Pain as his mistress
- Martine Audrain as his mother-in-law
[edit] Production
The film was produced by Les Cinémas de la Zone, a production company run by Gaspar Noé and his girlfriend Lucile Hadžihalilović. It was shot in an unusual combination of 16 mm film and the CinemaScope format. Recording took place sporadically over a period of two and a half years, with frequent budget problems. The fashion designer agnès b. eventually granted a loan which Noé says saved his production company. The gimmick of having a warning text before the story's climax was borrowed from William Castle's 1961 film Homicidal.[1]
According to a 2010 interview, Noé came up with the idea of the butcher character following a conversation he had with his father as a teenager. The Argentinian-born Noé was traveling to his mother's native France for the first time, and upon landing in Paris, his father turned to him and said: "They eat horses here" (referring to the French consumption of horse meat, which is unheard of in Argentina). Noé then decided that a horse meat butcher would make a great character in a film, and this formed the basis for his first short Carne.
[edit] Style
Most of the film's dialogue is the Butcher's interior monologue, spoken in voice-over.
The camera is usually stationary throughout the film, but this trend is sometimes contrasted by abrupt, rapid movements of the camera. The sudden movements are always accompanied by a loud sound effect, usually an explosive gunshot. A notable exception is the final crane shot, which moves gently away from the Butcher's window and turns to look down an empty street.
The film frequently cuts to title cards that display a variety of messages. The cards often repeat a notable word spoken by the Butcher, such as "Morality" and "Justice". At the film's climax, a "Warning" title card counts down 30 seconds under the pretext of giving viewers an opportunity to stop watching and avoid the remainder of the film.
[edit] Film connections
The film is a sequel to Noé's short film Carne which is essentially a shortened version. The Butcher also makes a cameo appearance at the beginning of Irréversible, Noe's follow-up to I Stand Alone. In a drunken monologue, the Butcher reveals that he was arrested for having sex with his daughter.
[edit] Accolades
- International Critic's Week Award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival
- Official Selection of Telluride, Toronto, New York, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Sundance film festivals.
[edit] References
- ^ Crawford, Travis (1999). "Brace Yourself for 'I Stand Alone'". Fangoria (O'Quinn Studios) (182): 68–70. ISSN 0164-2111.
[edit] External links
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