Posted at 8:30 a.m.
Ten years ago, Michel Hazanavicius showed boldness by proposing The Artist, a black and white film, without dialogue, which finally earned him the Oscar for best director. With Cut!the director of the first two cinematic adventures of OSS 117 in the XXIe century takes another form of risk: that of misunderstanding.
A spectator who knows nothing of what he is about to see may indeed fear the worst. During the first 30 minutes of Cut!, we offer a zombie film shot in sequence, badly acted, badly directed, where everything rings false. The trick of this remake of Don’t cut!a graduation film by Shin’ichirô Ueda, which has become cult among admirers of genre cinema, is revealed in the other two parts of the story.
After the presentation of the failed film, Michel Hazanavicius goes back to the preparation stage with all the artisans, including a Japanese producer played by Yoshiko Takehara, already seen in the original. The latter also requires that the names of all the characters, played by French actors, be the same as in the Japanese version…
The last act – the most interesting and the funniest – is then devoted to the making-of of the bad movie we saw at the beginning. This means that the same sequence shot, orchestrated to be broadcast live on a specialized site, is presented from other angles, from behind the scenes. The spectator is then witness to everything that went wrong to arrive at such a poor result. It’s very clever.
Supported by a high-flying cast (being both falsely bad and really good is not obvious!), Michel Hazanavicius, who often draws inspiration from different forms of cinema in his feature films, this time offers a kind of homage to all these anonymous craftsmen who run a parallel industry tucked away, far from major festivals and award ceremonies. It’s very successful, as long as we have the patience to get through the first part!
> Check the movie schedule
horror comedy
Cut!
Michel Hazanavicius
With Romain Duris, Berenice Bejo, Grégory Gadebois
1 h 50