Tout est faux (2014)
Directed by Jean-Marie Villeneuve

Film Review

Amid the throng of modern day Paris, a lone marginal figure struggles to articulate his feelings of alienation from a world that is as hollow as a politician's promises.  He picks up a battered megaphone for thirty euros but still cannot put into words what he feels he must say.  He gives the megaphone to a ranting lunatic he meets in the street, amplifying the latter's incoherent diatribe so that it drowns out the empty rhetoric from the candidates in France's 2012 presidential election...  For anyone who has woken up to the vacuity of modern life and is struggling to find anything deep or meaningful within its gaudy cellophane wrapping director Jean-Marie Villeneuve's first feature will have a profound resonance.  Tout est faux is neither a protest film nor a cry of despair.  It is an intensely lyrical, bleakly comical commentary on the way we now live, as conditioned automata that have all but lost the ability to think, to feel, to question and to dream.

It's an auspicious debut for a director who so far has only a handful of self-financed short films to his name.   Villeneuve's achievement is even more remarkable when you learn that he managed to make the film on a derisory budget of 2000 euros (almost all of which went on hiring essential expertise such as sound technicians).  Most of the crew (including the cast) offered their services for free and virtually the entire film was shot in public locations without permission (including a laundrette!).  It's incredible to think that for less than the cost of a second-hand car someone could make a full-length film, and the fact that Tout est faux looks as if it had a million dollar budget (which is what it would have cost if made in the conventional way) is a testament not only to the extraordinary commitment of Villeneuve and his team, but also to their ability.  More importantly, it proves that anyone with talent, enthusiasm and something worth saying can make a film.  It's good to know that cinema still manages to resist being the sole preserve of the rich, well-connected and cynically exploitative.

An outsider burning with something to say but lacking the means to do so, Villeneuve closely resembles the central character in his film, a solitary man in his 30s who leads a Kafkaesque-like existence in a mostly non-descript Paris.  Played by a likeably lugubrious Frédéric Bayer Azem (his first major film role), the anonymous Fred is in the throes of an existential crisis as he divides his time between wandering aimlessly around Paris, meeting up with his ambivalent girlfriend and performing an odd ritual in the pocket-sized subterranean office where he works (his job consists of answering telephone calls only with the words "Oui" and "D'accord" and making random doodles on bits of paper).

Fred has immense difficulty engaging with any of the people around him and their attempts to communicate with him just get swallowed up in the background noise.  It is as if he is afflicted with some kind of autism.  When his girlfriend begins dating another man (whose hobbies include cutting articles out of newspapers in public places, for no apparent reason other than to make him look like a deranged psychopath), Fred goes cycling around Paris with an attractive girl he met in a laundrette.  He punches a gobby dealer who keeps pestering him and gives half a cake he baked himself to a complete stranger.  These social encounters are like oases in a desert-like existence of ennui and alienation and Fred's main preoccupation is the meaningless of his existence, which can only be aggravated by Nicholas Sarkozy's frequent appearances on television during the election campaign.

There are echoes of George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971) throughout the film, with Fred bearing a striking similarity with the main male protagonist in Lucas' film.  Fred's awareness of the aridity of his life makes him appear an alien in his own world, an impression that is reinforced by some weirdly subjective camerawork and trippy editing.  For most of the film, Fred is shot from behind, the camera almost pressed up against the back of his head as he traipses around, magically flitting between a sun-dappled rural retreat and the crowded streets of Paris after dark.  The boundary between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly indistinct as the film progresses, but at the same time, Fred acquires a more tangible presence and he becomes a kind of Messianic figure, bringing meaning not only into his own life, but also into those he encounters, including his nauseating dealer.  "Look up into the sky and dream" - this is the message Villeneuve drives home as he signs off his first film, and it is unlikely to be the last we shall hear from him.  Tout est faux is an oddity and a delight, one of the most inspired French films of 2014.

Film Synopsis

Fred is a man alone in Paris.  Every day, he goes through the same monotonous rituals at work.  Then he wanders around the capital, mentally sifting through the components which make up the world that surrounds him.  It is a world from which Fred feels increasingly estranged and excluded, an urban wilderness, false and meaningless.  Amidst the grotesque charade that is the 2012 presidential election, everything strikes him as a hollow sham.  Tired of this barren reality, Fred sets about creating his own alternative...