“Keep An Eye Out!”– Movie Review

This past weekend, I attended the closing day of The French Film Festival at The Film Society Of Lincoln Center, for the New York Premiere of the new comedy, “Keep An Eye Out” (aka, “Au poste!”).

Synopsis

When a suspect in a murder is interrogated by police detectives, can he convince them of his innocence?

Story

Fugain (Grégoire Ludig) stumbled upon a dead body outside his apartment building.  Being the good citizen that he is, Fugain immediately reports his findings to the local police department.  When brought in for questioning, he is surprisingly viewed as a possible suspect. The case is assigned to Inspector Buron (Benoît Poelvoorde), who is particularly fastidious when it comes to his sui generis interviewing technique (to put it mildly).  But after taking an unusually long period of time to conduct the interview – and to ask seemingly irrelevant questions – the Inspector decides to take a break. It is at this point he assigns Philippe (Marc Fraize) to make sure Fugain doesn’t try to escape while he’s away.

Philippe is an interesting choice to stand guard.  This is mainly because he only has one eye. Suspicious of Fugain – who’s becoming increasingly hungry since it is now well-past his usual dinner time – Philippe sets forth the idea that he may be a dangerous character who might try to kill Philippe in order to escape.  When Fugain voices his skepticism – especially because he has no access to weapons – Philippe demonstrates that Fugain might grab the triangular ruler on the Inspector’s desk to attempt to slit the officer’s throat with one of its sharp edges. Proud of being on the force, Philippe offers to show Fugain his badge; having trouble locating it, he begins scavenging about the office – but when Philippe trips, he accidentally impales himself in his remaining good eye with the ruler.  Philippe is now not just completely blind, he’s also completely dead.

Understandably, Fugain begins to panic.  When Inspector Buron returns, will he assume that Fugain murdered Philippe?  If so, will this lead the Inspector to believe that Fugain may have committed the murder that he is already investigating?  With all of this running through his mind, Fugain then proceeds to hide Philippe’s body and clean up the mess before Buron gets back.  Upon the Inspector’s reappearance, he resumes this tortuous, excruciating interrogation of Fugain, who is now considerably more nervous than before Inspector Buron left.  Once Buron notices Philippe is missing, will this cause Fugain to be charged with dual murders?

Review

The surreal, absurdist dark humor of “Keep An Eye Out” is what makes this film stand out, but the heavily stylized manner in which the story is presented causes watching the movie to be something of a chore, despite its short length (it clocks in at less than an hour and a half).  There is a scene at the start of the motion picture that is used as a device for the opening titles; while this may plant the thought in the mind of the viewer that the subsequent story will spring from this, it actually turns out to be something of a non-sequitur (ore perhaps more accurately, a comedic MacGuffin), as it is never referenced again and is otherwise irrelevant.

For those sensitive to graphic violence, it should be noted that this movie is rather sanguinary, albeit in a way that attempts to be comedic.  The scene where Phillippe accidentally stabs himself, while funny, can be a little brutal when you’re shown the result. That and a shot of a man lying on the ground in a pool of blood outside of Fugain’s apartment complex are pretty much the only bloody scenes, so if you’re able to handle that, then you should be able to watch the movie without too much trouble (except, of course, when it comes to trying to make sense of all the mayhem, but that’s another matter altogether).

As mentioned, there’s a surreal and absurdist nature to the film – you either go with it or you don’t (and if you don’t, you may be completely lost).  For one thing, why would a police department hire someone missing an eye? Also, what is a police department doing with a triangular ruler (also known as a set square), which is typically used almost exclusively by architects?  Why is Fugain having these hallucinations in his flashbacks? What is a human eye doing on the floor of the detective’s office? The answer, presumably, could be, “Because absurdism”. And for some, that may be a sufficient justification. If interested, a good piece on the nature of absurdism may be found here.