The Birthday Party

The insistent, gnawing strings of composer Florencia Di Concilio’s score sneaking around the edges of Léa Mysius’ (The Five Devils) home invasion thriller is the first hint that things are about to go a bit Funny Games.

It all starts calmly enough for sharp-suited project manager Nora (Hafsia Herzi), who is celebrating her fortieth birthday and has a promotion in the offing. But a seeming overreaction to her tween daughter, Ida (Tawba El Gharchi), posting a TikTok video of them dancing in the cowshed with dairy farmer dad, Thomas (Bastien Bouillon), is the first hint that their rural retreat might not just be about making a go of his struggling family business.

Across the way, Monica Bellucci’s reclusive artist, Cristina, has converted one of their barns into her studio, where she whips up moody abstracts, including a chiaroscuro nightmare in swirling black with a crack of fading white. She realises that something’s off about the leather-jacketed wide boy (Paul Hamy) who says he’s there to check out the property. (Spoiler: he’s not.) When Flo’s neurodivergent brother Bègue (Alane Delhaye) shows up as the easily manipulated muscle for an invading gang headed up by Benoît Magimel’s sleek and scary Franck, the shit really hits the farm.

The shit really hits the farm

Franck claims that Nora isn’t who she says she is. Bègue, who goes by the nickname ‘Stutt’ because of his stutter, is charged with guarding Cristina. Franck and Flo threaten the family. Also in the mix are the world’s unluckiest latecomers, Nora’s colleagues Kim (Tatia Tsuladze) and Estelle (Servane Ducorps), who take an inordinate amount of time to cotton on just how bad a scrape they’ve wandered into. Of the baddies, it’s Hamy’s Flo who unsettles the most, with a sketchy energy and a wolf-like glint in his eye.

With a great cast and a claustrophobic, near-one-location shoot by Emilia Pérez cinematographer Paul Guilhaume, the scene is set for bloodshed. But The Birthday Party is too languorously paced to keep the tension levels high and a ridiculous, biology-defying third-act twist doesn’t help. Still, there’s just enough chills here for anyone who prefers their trauma to come with a rural French flavour.

The Birthday Party screened at the Sydney Film Festival.