‘The Birthday Party’ review: Hafsa Herzi, Benoit Magimel, and Monica Bellucci in Lea Misius’ thriller about a home invasion

Poor, mediocre, and often terrifying, birthday party (Date night) is a home invasion thriller in the style of films like Funny games and Speak no evileven if it doesn’t stop much for either of them’s sadistic shocks. Adapted from a French bestseller by Laurent Mauvenier, writer-director Léa Missius’ third film shares its remote setting and appetite for darkness through the 2022 fantasy drama. The five devilsalthough it is more cohesive than the scattered type. Although the film piles on unexpected odds in the climax, the new film is a taut thriller with a strong cast.

The family facing a long, hellish night is the Bergogne family – the hard-working Thomas (Bastien Bouillon) who runs a small dairy farm where they live in rural western France; his wife Nora (Hafsia Harzi), who gets a 40th birthday surprise when she is appointed chief city planner at her desk job; And their smart daughter, Ida (Touba Al-Gharshi).

They have a single neighbor, Cristina (Monica Bellucci), a wealthy Italian artist who lives and works in an elegant studio that looks like a converted barn, where Ida regularly stops on her way home from school to paint.

A major piece of foreshadowing occurs early on when Nora is panicked by a video Ida posted online of the family dancing. Despite her daughter’s protest over losing 60,000 views, Noura demands that she delete the video, explaining that she does not want to appear on social media.

Another important clue to the plot is the arrival while the family is out of the house of a foxy-looking man, later identified as Flo (Paul Hammy), who claims to Christina that he has come to look at the farm for sale. Cristina is unaware of any plans the Bergoni family has to sell her, and her eagerness to get rid of him seems to be a keen intuition.

Flo doesn’t stay away for long, returning first with younger brother Paige (Alain Dillehay), who spent two years in a psychiatric ward, followed by older brother Frank (Benoit Magimel), who clearly calls the shots. When Ida shows up at Cristina’s house after school, the place seems empty; Even the painter’s dog is gone. But the brothers only keep her hidden to prevent her from warning Thomas when he returns.

As much as the fear seeps in and the threat of violence looms, Misius’s script digs into the psychological abuse of intruders who have extensive intimate knowledge of the family. They know that Thomas bought the family farm at a time when the industry is struggling, and that he is in trouble financially. Frank and co. Let him enter the farm and start decorating the decorations for Nora’s birthday party before her presence is felt.

Nora suffers a flat tire on her way home from work, which slows her arrival. When she finally returned, Frank greeted her cheerfully, calling her Layla, and she assured him that he had the wrong person. But Frank won’t be convinced, making things increasingly thorny as the night progresses, and hints at the past that make Thomas question how well he knows his wife.

Mysius keeps this terrifying negotiation phase lively, and all the characters are well drawn. But the director truly makes the material her own by investing in the women, who not only tremble in fear, but quietly strategize, trying to identify any weaknesses in Frank and his brothers that they can exploit.

Some of the best scenes involve Bègue, who is left alone in the studio to monitor Christina. He tries to act tough, but she finds his soft weakness and sympathizes with the humiliating treatment he receives from his brothers. Bellucci is in good shape as it looks like Cristina is planning a move but is smart enough not to rush into it. I spoke to Bègue about her art and he clearly isn’t used to being talked to like an intelligent adult. A glass of wine and shared joints make their scenes look like a mellow hang. to some extent.

Meanwhile, Nora becomes increasingly concerned about parts of her past that have been kept secret from her family. When she is forced to confess her history with Frank, marital tensions and trust issues combine with the unpredictable nature of volatile strangers who are not averse to brutal violence.

Through all of this, Ida is encouraged to stay in the living room and watch cartoons on TV, but the child is attentive to everything that is happening, even if she does not fully understand it.

In addition to the women, the trio of thugs bring a powerful dynamic – Magimel has fully entered his Brando phase, his imposing physical presence as unsettling as his menacing words; Magnetic Hammy is a living bundle of cocky charm and menace; And Delhaye is almost poignant as Bègue, whose lack of self-confidence makes him unsuited to a life of crime, something he probably already knows.

But the standout performance came from Herzi, an unforgettable performance by Abdellatif Kechiche The secret of grains And at Cannes last year with her latest work as a director, the brilliant coming-of-age drama, Little sister. She’s a huge talent and seems like she deserves to be more widely recognized on both sides of the camera.

Considering how efficiently the film moves through the setup all the way to an uncomfortable middle section in which anything could happen, it’s a shame that Mysius falters in the big finale. More often than not, she exits the film with a disturbing inattention to the contingency of reality, like a character bleeding from a gunshot wound, putting aside his pain to attend to matters of the heart. The unexpected skill of wielding another character’s gun sounds like something out of an old Western, a cliche that could be picked up in any puppet classroom screenwriting.

The track record of European films being remade in America is all over the place, but this is one case where some clever retooling of a wobbly third act could result in a viable property.