Arès (2016)
Directed by Jean-Patrick Benes

Film Review

Jean-Patrick Benes's first solo feature as a director (he previously directed Vilaine (2008) with Allan Mauduit) is clearly inspired by the present economic crisis in Greece and Spain.  Far from being the stuff of outlandish science-fiction, the grim dystopian future that Arès presents is all too plausible.  In fact, extrapolating twenty years into the future from where we are now it seems quite likely that the whole of Europe will be on its uppers, with unemployment in excess of 25 per cent and elected governments replaced by all-powerful mega-corporations.  George Orwell's novel 1984 was considered far-fetched when it came out in 1948 but proved to be frighteningly accurate.  Benes's speculative peep into the future may be even more spot on.

Arès is certainly an oddity - an extremely rare example of a science-fiction film made in France.  Unfortunately Benes had nothing like the resources available to your average Hollywood sci-fi movie director and so, wisely, he opted for the Ridley Scott approach, making a little go an incredibly long way by concentrating more on moody atmospherics than jazzy effects.  Arès looks as if it comes from the same stable as Blade Runner and achieves a similar sense of stifling oppression with its imaginative photography and design.  Given a Hollywood budget, Benes would no doubt have delivered a far more polished work, but modest as it is his off-beat sci-fi romp still has considerable appeal - at least on the design front.

Where the film falls down is in the script department.  With characters that feel more like comicbook caricatures than real people and a pedestrian plot that is painfully predictable, the screenplay lets the film down badly, although the cast go some way to make up for this deficiency.  The Swedish actor Ola Rapace has a solid presence in the title role (previously he was seen playing a mercenary in the Bond movie Skyfall), Hélène Fillières brightens things up as spunky cop and Louis-Do de Lencquesaing makes a wonderfully villainous company executive.  The performances do not completely compensate for the dearth of imagination in the script but they prevent Arès from being an outright disappointment.  Perhaps the main thing marring the film's enjoyment value is the fact that the future vision it offers is just too depressingly believable.

Film Synopsis

By 2035, France has become one of the poorest countries in the world.  A fifth of the population - over ten million people - are without work, and poverty and homelessness are endemic.  Having grown resigned to the misery that is all around them, the masses seek escape by watching televised fights in which excessively drugged contestants beat the living daylights out of each other.  It is the big corporations, not politicians, who now govern the country.  One of these is a large pharmaceuticals firm that needs a new guinea pig to test its latest money-spinning product.  Reda, a boxer and police informant nicknamed Arès, proves to be the ideal subject - well, he is the first to survive taking the drug.  When his sister is arrested, Reda has a real-life battle to fight...