Escalade (2011)
Directed by Charlotte Silvera

Film Review

In the 1980s, Charlotte Silvera enjoyed some success as a debutant filmmaker with her humane dramas Louise... l'insoumise (1985), and Prisonnières (1988).   Her 1997 film C'est la tangente que je préfère was an engaging coming-of-age drama that made the unlikely equation between maths and love.  Lately, however, Silvera's film work has shown a dramatic leap to the lower depths of mediocrity, and her justly reviled Les Filles, personne s'en méfie (2002) was followed by something even less tolerable: Escalade.   Cinema doesn't get much worse than this, it really doesn't..

Escalade is a film that starts from a reasonable premise but quickly collapses under the weight of the ineptitude that is thrown at it, from just about every direction.  Take one totally implausible situation, a collection of instantly unlikeable characters played by a group of individuals with no obvious acting ability, direct with a minimum of restraint and the result can only be a Grade A disaster.  Even Carmen Maura, an actress of considerable repute, cannot resist going insanely O.T.T. with the rest, turning in the worst performance of her career (and who can blame her, given the quality of the script that has been foisted on her).  Escalade is such an unmitigated mess of a film that it is an agony to sit through even half of it.  To call it amateurish would be understating matters by a factor of ten.

Film Synopsis

Equipped with a bouquet of flowers and a set of disarming smiles, four high school students pay a private call on their headmistress, Alice Nabat, to wish her a happy birthday.  Moved by this kind gesture, Alice invites the teenagers in for a drink, completely unaware of what she is letting herself in for.  Behind the nice smiles there are dark and sinister thoughts.  Alice's guests intend to give her an education of an altogether different kind from the one she is used to...