Film

Hell (2005)

Director: Danis Tanovic

Movie review

From Time Out London

Before his death in 1996, Krzysztof Kieslowski had been working on a trilogy of screenplays based on Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ with his longtime collaborator, Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Later, ‘Run Lola Run’ director Tom Tykwer helmed the only completed script, ‘Heaven’, and now Danis Tanovic (‘No Man’s Land’) tries his hand at ‘Hell’, a baroque family saga that sifts through the wreckage of a primal domestic catastrophe. The template is a Chekhovian sisterly triangle of stalkers and stalkees: po-faced Sophie (Emmanuelle Béart) spies on her adulterous husband; lonely spinster Cécile (Karin Viard) isn’t sure whether or not she minds that a handsome young fellow is following her; and youngest sib Anne (Marie Gillain) obsesses hysterically over the much older man who left her. All three women are doomed to adult misery, it’s suggested, by the original sins of their parents – Mum (Carole Bouquet), for her part, marinates in mute spite at an old folks’ home – but all concerned parties in ‘Hell’ seem mere cogs in a melodrama machine, which dispenses red herrings, convulsive freakouts, and convoluted revelations at predictable intervals.

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