Stay­ing Ver­ti­cal – first look review

Alain Guiraudie’s pre­vi­ous film, Stranger by the Lake, was the sort of film that could be defined with genre descrip­tors, mak­ing a critic’s life easy. It is a roman­tic thriller. If you want­ed to say more, it’s a beau­ti­ful­ly shot, sex­u­al­ly explic­it sto­ry of lust and mur­der by a gay cruis­ing lake.

His lat­est, Stay­ing Ver­ti­cal, harks back to Guiraudie’s ear­li­er – ami­able and strange – char­ac­ter come­dies, while retain­ing the breath­tak­ing assur­ance at shoot­ing the nat­ur­al world that made Stranger by the Lake so allur­ing and hyp­not­ic. Its form may be too mean­der­ing for some tastes, but this is a film in which every sequence con­tains such rich gob­bets of poise, humour and ele­gance, that it makes for a fair­ly glo­ri­ous cin­e­mat­ic experience.

Imag­ine the scene: a man looks out from atop a hill. The cam­era scans the land­scape from his point of view, not­ing all of the rolling green hills. In the dis­tance, small fig­ures move across the bot­tom of the screen, where hill meets road. They appear mere­ly as aes­thet­ic details, com­ple­ment­ing the vista, until the man puts on his binoc­u­lars. The fig­ures take shape as the moth­er of the man’s baby, drag­ging a suit­case, with her two boys. They get in a car and dri­ve off. It’s an ellip­ti­cal and ele­gant way of show­ing a woman leav­ing her man. Each event unfolds with a sim­i­lar rhythm: estab­lish­ing shot of the great nature, a seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant human detail and then – bam! – the big­ger picture.

The way the sto­ry flows is so pleas­ant, almost like a lul­la­by, that it’s an effort to direct the mind to what it’s all about. The cen­tral fig­ure is Leo, the afore­men­tioned man on the hill, played by the delight that is Damien Bon­nard. He glides along a coun­try road in his Renault, set­tling on a cheru­bic young man who is just stand­ing there, frown­ing. So, at first, Leo has a preda­to­ry edge. It’s not long before he’s fuck­ing a blonde shep­herdess called Marie (India Hair), who he meets while out search­ing for wolves. Seam­less­ly, they begin a life togeth­er. A child is born.

Most films oper­ate by intro­duc­ing the deter­min­ing facts of a char­ac­ter, and only sub­se­quent­ly will the plot con­cern them. Guiraudie gives Leo action before we have any inkling of who he is. The mys­tery of his iden­ti­ty leads to light ten­sion, and the sense that this movie may take a side-road into dark­er depths. Bonnard’s face is an ide­al host for mys­tery. He is dark and hand­some and car­ries an envi­able con­fi­dence and poise, but there is also a sheep­ish qual­i­ty that grows as we learn that he is a man hope­less­ly in the grip of the moment. His dead­pan demeanour makes him a flaw­less per­former of phys­i­cal com­e­dy. The punch­line of a chase sequence is so bril­liant­ly effec­tive because of the fran­tic build-up cre­at­ed by Bonnard’s fleet-foot­ed but clum­sy flight.

‘Wolves kill here’ is a sign paint­ed in white on black tar­pau­lin by Marie’s father, Jean-Louis (Raphael Thier­ry). Leo is clutch­ing a lamb when he even­tu­al­ly meets a wolf. The wolf is shot frontal­ly – just like the male and female anato­my in the love-mak­ing scenes. Bold images are the mate­r­i­al from which this film is woven. Lit­tle else is con­stant in a fan­ci­ful sto­ry about a man going for ​“the great out­doors – pos­ter­i­ty,” a life of per­il and expe­ri­ence and trust in fel­low trav­ellers ahead of the com­fort and sta­tus of the job that he spends all of his time avoiding.

Leo is more inter­est­ed in peo­ple than his own sur­vival and treats every­one he encoun­ters with com­pas­sion. Whether it’s a home­less man under a bridge or an old man at death’s door, he is will­ing to do what needs to be done. When Leo real­ly gets stuck in with deathbed com­fort­ing, there comes a scene which imbues the head-spin­ning dark­ness of a Pink Floyd instru­men­tal with warmth, trans­form­ing swirling astral melodies, as some­one has their last gasp and some­thing impor­tant stays vertical.