Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan as New York paramedics in “Black Flies”, a dark but starchy film

Adapted from the novel 911 by Shannon Burke, inspired by her experience as a New York paramedic, Black Flies offers a first selection in competition to the French director Jean-Baptiste Sauvaire, but under the American nationality. The filmmaker had already passed through Cannes in 2008, where he won the Prix de l’espoir at Un certain regard with johnny mad dog. It is served in Black Flies by the handsome acting duo of Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan.

chaotic opening

Olie Cross (Tye Sheridan) arrives as a novice in the emergency room of a large New York hospital. He becomes the partner of a hardened emergency doctor, Gene Rutkovsky (Sean Penn), with whom he confronts situations of extreme violence. Alternating between victims of gun fights between gangs, alcoholics and drug addicts on the loose, sordid suicides and other violence against women, Cross questions his convictions about his mission and his life.

Black Flies opens with a remarkable night sequence, where a staff of New York paramedics is sent to a crime scene in the middle of the street following an exchange of fire between rival gangs. The soundtrack saturated with sirens, the descent of the stretchers in the general stress, the screams, against a backdrop of the increasing power of the opening of the Ring of Wagner, on a chaotic montage which galvanizes the electric lights, takes to the guts. This technical mastery will never leave film.

Overweight

In one sequence, Jean-Baptiste Sauvaire won the stripes of a great director. From time to time he will rediscover this dexterity in his art of filming the street and the tensions between characters projected into extreme situations. Unfortunately, the praise stops there, faced with a scenario that overloads the affects. Even if the scenes come from Shannon Burke’s autobiographical novel, their sequence in the film generates a redundancy that weighs down the dramaturgy. The origins of Cross’s vocation are also weighty and the resolution of the film, after three successive endings to reach a positive note in a darkest film, does not help matters.

Jean-Baptiste Sauvaire clearly shows the initiatory bond that unites Rutkovsky and Cross, but it is the confrontation of the latter with the second ambulance driver, cynical, provocative and violent, played by a hallucinated Michael Pitt, which dominates. The relationship between Cross and his one-night lover Nancy (Katherine Waterson) is also lacking in substance. Finally, Black Flies is worth more for its technical qualities than for its emotional power.

The sheet

Gender : Thriller / Drama
Director: Jean Baptiste Sauvaire
Actors: Sean Penn, Tye Sheridan, Katherine Waterston, Michael Pitt, Mike Tyson
Country : UNITED STATES
Duration : 2h00
Exit : shortly
Distributer : Metropolitan FilmExport