Cavale

Plot synopsis:
Most of the film is silent and there are just as few dialogue lines as necessary.
In the initial sequence during the opening credits, in a black screen the audience can hear different sounds of prison gates opening and someone walking down corridors, then shouts are heard and the audience is brought just outside the prison where Bruno Le Roux, a former leftist revolutionary, has just escaped. An accomplice in a mask, Jean-Jean, is waiting for him, he shoots the searchlights and both climb into a car and escape through the streets into the country. They come across a police blockade but manage to escape through a hail of bullets. The next morning Bruno lies on the grass, Jean-Jean is dead. Bruno takes everything in the car and disguises himself.
He heads to Grenoble, France, in the train but runs into the police at the train station; he manages to escape and runs into a safe-house in a garage within an apartment complex. News of his escapade reach other people involved with him in his past, amongst them Jacquillat, a drug dealer and owner of a fronting company related to transportation of goods and Jeanne and Francis, former revolutionaries. Francis wanders if Bruno shall be coming to their place but she is sure that he will try to escape to Italy.
Bruno forges identifications and arranges many looks for himself, steals a car, changes the licence plates and connects a radio scanner so he can hear the feedback of the police on him. The Police are tailing Jeanne. That night Bruno pays a visit to Freddy, who obviously shares some past with him, Le Roux demands to see Jacquillat and Freddy reluctantly agrees to call him after offering help to take Bruno to Italy, which he will not do until some old scores have been settled with Jacquillat. Freddy goes to the back of the shop, Bruno sees from the window a group of policemen and also has a glimpse at Police Inspector Pascal Manise, whom he had seen earlier in the train station, and assumes that Freddy has betrayed him, he leaves the bar and sees Manise enter. He calls Freddy to tell him that it was not a smart move.
Jacquillat has made his office his refuge and sends his henchmen after Le Roux. Freddy fears for his life and has become paranoid as he runs the streets he sees Bruno everywhere but when he arrives at his apartment he seems more relaxed only to be shot at the entrance of his building by Le Roux. Bruno shows up at Jeanne's, it turns out that she was actually expecting him and gives him a bunch of keys that she has been keeping and burns communist pamphlets that she had hidden away in her son's closet for 15 years. While the Police investigate Freddy's murder, Bruno gets a glimpse at Jacquillat but does not engage him, because he is talking to Manise.
Bruno pays a visit to Madame Guiot, the mother of Jean-Jean and tells her that he is dead and that now he will take care of her, she refuses and throws him out. Le Roux goes to an apartment with the new keys but he tries to open the wrong door and a neighbour emerges from the apartment, he apologizes for the mistake and goes to his apartment, but now there is a witness about his looks and knows that he must change his plans. He takes a lot of explosive materials from the apartment and guns and burns the apartment. He bombs the Court House. This triggers the police to arrest Jeanne for questioning but she is still loyal to him and will not say a word.
In the meantime, Le Roux has been following Jacquillat's henchmen and ends up following Banane, a petty drug dealer, who while selling drugs on the street ends up beating a woman, at first Le Roux does not intervene but the beating is so strong that he cannot take it anymore and engages Banane with his gun and forces him to open the letterbox where he hides his drugs, she takes all she can and leaves. Bruno frisks Banane and finds a photo of the woman who has just left; Banane has been ordered not to sell her anything. Bruno poses then as "Yvan" says that he wants to meet Jacquillat. Just as he is about to leave, the woman comes back with news that the police is all around the place. They must wait it out but she is very sick from withdrawal syndrome, she offers to take him to her place where he will be safe after she figures out that the police is looking for him, her husband is Manise and no one shall look for him there.
Once at the apartment she shoots up and falls asleep. Just as he is about to leave, Agnès (the woman) keels over and is about to die due to overdose, Bruno hesitates but finally saves her. While he is washing her wounds in the bathroom she tells him that in 15 years of marriage, her husband has always provided her with all the drugs she wanted but now he has stopped and it is the first time that she has had to buy her own fixes. He promises her to help her get more drugs. He tells her that his name is Pierre.
Jeanne is liberated. Early in the morning Bruno goes to Banane's and learns that a meeting with Jacquillat has been set at 23:00. Later that same morning, while Jeanne is preparing a little celebration for her liberation, Bruno asks her to help him that night, she refuses to help him and the only thing that she will do for him is cross him over the border into Italy. He refuses and reminds her that she has been free and able to live her life only because he and all the others who have spent time in prison have kept their mouths shut, therefore she owes them, he will come at 22:45 for her. Agnès takes "Pierre" to a chalet in the mountains and promises him to get a car.
In the chalet, while preparing for that evening, Bruno is confronted by Cécile the owner of the chalet, because Cécile thinks that her husband is having an affair with Agnès. They tell her that he is Pierre an unemployed machinist and Agnès' lover, after Cécile is more calm she offers to get him a job and leaves.
Bruno goes to Jeanne's but she is not there. He goes alone to the meeting which turns out to be an ambush, there is a shoot out, many are killed. Bruno manages to escape and calls for Jeanne to help him. She takes him to the chalet, where they discuss about Bruno's outdated ideas and demands to know that if he can justify the deaths of several innocent people that they have killed during their terrorist attacks. Jeanne confesses to Francis what she did (she had said earlier that she was helping a friend), but when asked about Le Roux's whereabouts, she still will not say anything.
The next day at the chalet Bruno is confronted again by Cécile, who now believes that he is Agnès' dealer and the one who is blackmailing Manise but he denies it and tells her that Manise actually is a wife beater, she leaves. Bruno knows he has to leave and steals a car that happened to be near the chalet. Once in the city he is cut off by many police blockades, he dumps the car and goes to Jeanne's, but she is not there. When she arrives, Bruno beats Francis to force her to help him. She unwittingly reveals that the police will not search her car because they are not looking for a woman with a child. Bruno has Jeanne tie Francis up and they leave her apartment with the child. They pass the blockade and he then manages to arrive at his safe house in the garage, but does not know that Jeanne has followed him. She then goes to Manise's place and tells him where to find Le Roux. Manise discloses Le Roux's location to both the police and Jacquillat.
Le Roux hears movements outside his hide out and manages to escape, the police and Jacquillat's henchmen have engaged in a shoot out which gives him the opportunity to leave undetected. He goes to Jacquillat's office where he shoots him and takes his car with which he goes to the chalet. He starts climbing the Alps in order to escape to Italy but on the top of a mountain he walks into a crevasse, he tries to climb out but he cannot and sinks to the bottom.

Tags: avant garde

Review:
"On the Run (Cavale)" is the first third of an engrossing experiment in story telling that crosses "Rashomon" with a television miniseries to show us an ensemble of intersecting characters over a couple of days to gradually reveal the complicated truth about each.
Writer/director Lucas Belvaux uses a clever technique to communicate just how differently the characters perceive the same situations-- they are literally in different movies and, a la "Rules of the Game," everyone has their reasons.
"On the Run"is a tense, fast-paced escaped con on-the-run Raoul Walsh-feeling film, with the auteur himself playing a Humphrey Bogart-type who can be cruel or kind; "An Amazing Couple (Un couple épatant)" is an Ernest Lubitch-inspired laugh-out-loud comedy of mistaken communication; and "After the Life (Après la vie)" is a Sidney Lumet-feeling gritty, conflicted cop melodrama with seamy and tender moments.
"Time Code" experimented turning the two-dimensions of film into three with multiple digital video screens.
This trilogy is more effective in showing us what happens as characters leave the frame.
Belvaux goes beyond the techniques used in the cancelled TV series "Boomtown" or the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu in "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams" with their stream-of-consciousness flashbacks character by character.I don't see how I can deal with each film separately.
Theoretically, one can see the three movies alone or independently out of order, but that would be like watching one episode of a series like "The Wire" or "The Sopranos" and wondering what the big deal is.
Only a handful of patrons in my theater joined me in a one-day triple-feature; I guess the others have a better memory than I do that they could see each film on separate days, though a marathon does inevitably lead to some mind-wandering that could miss important clues and revelations so this is ideal for a triple-packed DVD.
On DVD we'll be able to replay the excellent acting to see if in fact the actors do shade their performances differently when particular scenes are enacted from different characters' viewpoints -- are these takes from the same staging or not?
Or are we bringing our increasing knowledge (and constantly changing sympathies) about each character to our impressions of the repeating scenes?
One reason this conceit works is because of the unifying theme of obsession - each character is so completely single-minded in their focus on one issue that they are blind to what else is happening even as they evolve to find catharsis.
The slow revelation technique also works because of the parallel theme of aging and acceptance of the consequences of their actions, as some can face how they have changed and some can't change.
You need to see all three films to learn about each character's past and conclusion, as secondary characters in one film are thrust to the fore in another in explaining a key piece of motivation.
It is when you alone know the truth and the rest of the world is controlled by the enemy.
This film shows you from the terrorist perspective his path out of jail and back to his struggle from 15 years ago.
First, you are with him, escaping the police, fleeing, contacting former comrades and then, little by little you get to know the face of his murders.
And then the corollary question: if 15 years later, when the world has changed, a terrorist can resume his fight while he is the only one left, what to expect in a time where many think his cause is just ?.
This film (which can be seen as a standalone film) is part of a trilogy.
Three films, not consecutive, but parallel.
Three stories, simultaneous, with same actors, same characters.
Main actors in one film are secondary actors in the two others.
There are common scenes between each movie, but always shown in a different way, a different point of vue.
"Un couple epatant" is a comedy, with (Ornella Muti/Francois Morel),"Cavale" is a thriller, with (Lucas Belvaux/Catherine Frot), and "Apres la vie" is a drama, with (Gilbert Melki/Dominique Blanc).You can see only one or two of these movies, but it is really better to see all of them, as each one enlights some dark moments of the two others.
The supposed order is the one i used, but you can see these films in any order.Individually speaking, the films are average (except "Apres la vie", the best one), but globally the experience is very good and very exciting..
Bruno le Roux, a former terrorist, has escaped from prison and he rediscovers his former hiding places where are his explosive and foods reserves.
Bruno contacts also Jacquillat, a local godfather who was before put up the money for the attacks.
In fact, Bruno searches after the man who denounces the organization to the police to kill it.
But, a policeman is searching him and Bruno is obliged to run away all the time and to kill all men that chase him.
The movie is a captivating thriller and very well acted by Lucas Belvaux as are the first part (An amazing couple - "Un couple épatant") and the third part (After the life - "Après la vie").
The entire trilogy seems to me to be big movies..
I saw this film at the SF International Film Festival, and unfortunately was only able to this one film out of the trilogy.
Yet I enjoyed this film greatly, and have not seen many thrillers like it.
Using very little dialogue, it follows the life of a former militant leftist who just escaped from prison.
He finds himself trying to live the same life he left 15 years ago, yet he finds trouble in trying to flee from the police and detectives.
Very good cinematography and well acted.
I highly recommend seeing this film, and hope that I myself as well will be able to see the complete trilogy..
wonderful film.
too bad the subtitles did not include all the chatter (some of the police band radio, the tv, small bits of conversation) -- LOVED this picture which was shot, edited, directed and acted with clarity, economy and emotion played simply & directly.
lucas did amazing work as both actor & director (& writer) and richly deserves the accolades he is getting on this project.use of the location was also good, i actually recognised the gare de grenoble as they approached it on the train & one really got the feeling of being EN CAVALE with all the POV shots in the cars, on the train, going through the woods, climbing --.
This makes me real bitter that intelligent, thorough, and stylistically unique films are being made elsewhere, but the American market doesn't seem interested because...
The acting and writing are still better even if you do have to read the translated subtitles.
You know what, I should boycott American movies for a while because I really haven't had much experience with foreign films, but of the last three films I saw, two of them were French, and one was from Hollywood.
Cavale was one of the best thrillers I've ever seen.
It was full of humanity, which is another thing that American films seem to be lacking.
One of the things I liked best about it was the underlying subtlety in the characters.
If you haven't seen Cavale, do so, you're going to love it..
This is just about the best film I have seen in the last 5 or so years.The acting, direction, cinematography and editing are all first class and the unintrusive yet effective soundtrack music using just a double bass was inspired.
Lucas Belvaux has produced a masterpiece and assembled a superb cast to bring the story to life.
I am really looking forward to the rest of the trilogy..
First part of an incredible trilogy.
This is probably the best place to start on Belvaux's incredible trilogy.
On its own, it is a more than satisfying thriller, starring the director.
But in context with the accompanying two films, one has to wonder where this guy has been hiding all this time.
As the story unfolds you start to learn more and more of the lead character's persona, his motivations and his potential for destruction.
This is no ordinary "action" film where the hero can do no wrong.
Some people may be dissatisfied with the ending, but I think that it's exactly where the story has to go.
And this is born out when you see the other two parts, Un Couple epatant and Apres la vie.
If this trilogy gets the recognition it deserves, I'm sure it will be referred to as the cinematic masterpiece that it is, along with recent films like Memento and Amores Perros..
I found this movie very slow moving and ultimately boring, i only stayed until the end because i figured it was building to an interesting climax but in the end it just petered out slowly, leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
However I liked some of the editing ideas and the sound design was very good, a lot of the action was told only with sound as there is very little dialogue.
The sudden bursts of violence and action were well done, and in most cases shocking and realistic, they jolted me awake occasionly, unfortunately i just didn't really get the characters and their relationships, back story etc.
Maybe more will become clear if i see the other two films in the trilogy.
However i can't recommend this as a stand alone film at all..
This trilogy reminds me something.
Actually this trilogy looks very the same as Nicolas Winding Refn's one called PUSHER.
The main character in one of the three films is only a supporting one in the next movie; very interesting indeed.
I guess there were more schemes like this one in other movies..
Belgian film from 2003, the first part of a trilogy that I had never heard of and that was recommended to me by a cinéphile friend, precisely, from Belgium.With only this movie Lucas Belvaux is a candidate to enter my personal Olympus of Filmmakers.
I do not know how the other two movies are yet but this one is good cinema, shocking, sober but extremely violent.
It has been 15 years since it was made but it still stands as a solid production with a forceful story.
Belvaux himself (who made an acting career in France) leads the cast as Bruno, a leftist ex-militant who escapes from prison, where he has served 15 years of a sentence.
Bruno returns to settle accounts to those who were traitors to the cause, to fight for the proletarian masses, to exterminate the oppressors: so convinced is the man that he unleashes a wave of violence and manifests features of extreme cruelty that catch you by surprise.
Now I'm going for the second installment, in which characters that were secondary in the first one come to the fore.
Winner of the Prix Louis Delluc and the award of the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics for Best Film of the Year..
Well worth seeing, but much more so if you see the whole 'Trilogy'.
The first part of Belvaux's 'The Trilogy', where three films with very different tones overlap some characters and incidents.
This first part is a taught, well made, violent thriller, following an escaped communist revolutionary, determined to return to the bombing and violence that put him in jail 20 years ago, while settling old scores with enemies, and re-contacting old allies.
Belvaux shows daring in not working to make his character very sympathetic, and allowing our initial almost automatic sympathy for our lead character to be ever more harshly challenged.
We come slowly to realize this is a violent zealot, unmoved by the fact that the revolution that seemed to make sense as a young man now seems arbitrary and insane, and that his callous disregard for his victims isn't much of a start on a new world order.
In a vacuum, this dark, cynical noir would still be a good film, but with the next part of the Trilogy, it gains in levels and meanings.
But it's never boring, always involving, and with the next film, it's something more..
Although being the first part of a trilogy, I'm reviewing 'On the Run' now, separately, as its the only part I've seen, as yet.French cinema pioneered the perfect heist movie and whilst this is essentially more a fugitive chase after a jail break, it never lets up.
Films such as The French Connection, Ronin, Leon and Nikkita are all Gallic set or influenced and may have influenced Belcaux in the making of this.
(I'd recommend all those titles on their own merit, too).There's a stone-cold calculating ruthlessness about the lead, like Edward Fox's "Day of the Jackal" (French set, of course; comparisons can be made, though that film's sheer slickness isn't quite there).
The French are currently doing some excellent crime drama but this takes it further as we are whistle-stopped around some wonderful Alpine locations.
We know that there's an element of a political, possibly local terrorism cell that may get re-ignited running through this film and we're not told everything either, which adds to the suspense.
Noted French financed films such as 'Battle of Algiers' and 'Z' have paved the way for, often paler Hollywood impersonations.
This film isn't about shooting 'em up, Stallone style.
It's multi-layered, with repercussions rippling outwards....The near two-hour runtime doesn't drag and whilst there might not be the lead charisma, cleverness, wit perhaps or sheer scale of the very best US blockbuster, there are many memorable twists and turns and has a gritty sense of realism.
Belvaux's trilogy: See all three together.
Lucas Belvaux's trilogy of films is meant to be taken as one multi-faceted unit, and indeed it is best viewed as such.
The first (as I saw them), "On the Run" ("Cavale"), is a `thriller,' and, indeed, the prison break that opens the picture has some thrilling chase sequences, and the denouement features a nerve-rattling gunfight with the main character, a convicted terrorist (Belvaux himself), escaped to settle scores and look up an old flame (Catherine Frot) who has settled down with a family.
In between, we get our first glimpses of  a relationship between the escapee and the drug-addicted wife (Dominique Blanc) of a down on his luck cop (Gilbert Melki), and the first hints of events in the second film, the romantic comedy, "An Amazing Couple."   The trilogy ties up with a character study (or `melodrama'), "After the Life", about Melki's cop and Blanc's drug-addled wife.
The thriller is hobbled a bit, I thought, by it's involvement with the other interwoven stories.
Or, as a friend of mine recommended, maybe I should just watch Kieslowski's `Three Colors' trilogy instead?.
If he didn't exactly invent/patent the concept of the trilogy using the same event(s) setting(s) and characters then Alan Ayckbourne certainly exploited it to the full and will be forever associated with the genre via such plays as 'The Norman Conquests' and 'House', 'Garden'.
Lucas Belvaux borrows the concept and applies a touch of spin.
In the Ayckbourne works the characters tend to have equal weight in each play so that when one walks offstage in a play set in the Living Room he/she will walk ON stage at the same chronological moment in a play set in the Garden.
With Belvaux leading players of one part of the trilogie are reduced to spear-carriers in others.
The PR says that each movie stands alone and may be viewed in any order.
Perversely I saw them in reverse order, 3, 2, 1 and though it WAS clear what was going on it would certainly make for a richer viewing to see them sequentially.
One: This introduces - however fleetingly - all of the principals but it is primarily the story of Bruno Le Roux (Belvaux himself) a political prisoner or terrorist depending on your point of view, who has busted out of the slammer and come to Grenoble to cut up a few old touches.
Catherine Frot gets the Lion's share of the supporting roles as Jeanne Rivet who, 20 years ago, was part of the Revolutionary movement alongside Le Roux but now doesn't want to know.
She is now teaching school and two of her colleagues, Agnes Manise (Dominique Blanc) and Cecile Costes (Ornella Muti) will figure peripherally in One and star in Two (Muti) and 3 (Blanc).
Also important to the plot is Jacquillat (Patrick Descamps) an underworld character.
Whilst on the lam Bruno stumbles across a man beating a woman savagely.
She confesses to Bruno that her husband, a detective, has been supplying her for years but suddenly stopped.
She takes Bruno home with her (husband is on the graveyard shift) and then borrows the key to a holiday chalet from a colleague (Muti), who is not best pleased to become involved in what she assumes to be a sordid liaison.
We now know all we need to enjoy (or not, as the case may be) Two: (the story of Cecile and erratic hubby) and Three: (The story of Agnes and Pascal).
If Belvaux doesn't quite succeed in bringing off three genres - Thriller-Comedy-Polar then he makes a decent stab at it and joins the ranks of Actor-Directors led by Orson Welles with an honorable mention for Clint Eastwood.
If you enjoy Policiers the chances are you will enjoy Three; if comedy is your thing the chances are you will be disappointed with Two; if Thrillers light your fire you'll probably like more than dislike One. 6/10.
A man escapes from prison.
That's the whole movie.
spoiler alert?)As a technical treat and a minimalist story, it has its value and it is interesting to watch.
It's just a little obnoxious to follow a movie about a person grasping to uphold his values only to "randomly" (as a point) fall into a blank hole.