Lemming (2005)

Director:

Dominik Moll

Writers:

Gilles Marchand (writer)
Dominik Moll (writer)

Release Date:

11 May 2005 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

After the death of his boss's wife, a young engineer faces the sudden psychological metamorphosis of his own wife, seemingly possessed by the soul of the deceased...

Plot Keywords:

Lemming | Suicide | Murder | Adultery | Fake Suicide

Awards:

4 nominations

Cast

Laurent Lucas	...	Alain Getty
Charlotte Gainsbourg	...	Bénédicte Getty
Charlotte Rampling	...	Alice Pollock
André Dussollier	...	Richard Pollock
Jacques Bonnaffé	...	Nicolas Chevalier
Véronique Affholder	...	Francine
Michel Cassagne	...	Le vétérinaire
Florence Desille	...	L'infirmière
Emmanuel Gayet	...	Le médecin de garde
Félix Gonzales	...	Félix, le fils du voisin
Nicolas Jouhet	...	L'employé des eaux
Fabrice Robert	...	Bruno
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Natacha Boussaa	...	Une call-girl

Runtime:

129 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Netherlands:16 | UK:15 | Iceland:16 | Ireland:15A | Italy:VM14 | Sweden:11 | USA:Not Rated | Hungary:16 | Singapore:PG | Germany:12 | South Korea:18 | Australia:M | Switzerland:14 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Vaud)

Filming Locations:

Hauts de Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, France

Company:

Diaphana Films

Trivia:

The film opened the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Goofs:

Factual errors: The "flying web cam" does not have a tail rotor.

Soundtrack:

Dream a Little Dream of Me

We need a stronger key motivator, I think, but at least we learn about lemmings

Lemming starts promisingly with the dinner party from hell. A young, much in love couple is preparing dinner for their guests, his boss and the boss' wife. Alain Getty (Laurent Lucas) is the newly hired home automation designer at The Pollack Company. He's smart, decent and good-looking. His wife, Benedicte, is alert, pretty and bright. She cooks. He tastes. They smooch. Then their guests show up. His boss, Richard Pollack (Andre Dussollier), is older, gracious and friendly. Alice Pollack (Charlotte Rampling), grim and puffy-eyed, is something else, from the sunglasses she wears at table to the glass of wine she throws in her husband's face. In between, the young couple hears her accusations of his infidelity. She trains her venom on the young wife as she leaves. On top of all this, the kitchen sink's drain is stopped up with what we later find is a lemming.

So far, so good.

But if we were expecting the clever, unnerving suspense of director Dominik Moll's With A Friend Like Harry from 2000, we're going to be not only disappointed but also surprised at Moll's miscues. The blame must be shared with his co-writer, Gilles Marchand. There simply are no motivations or situations that arise other than what, over and over, Moll and Marchand create out of thin air for us. That is, of course what the movies are all about. But with A Friend Like Harry, all we had to do was accept one unlikely situation...that there might be someone lurking about like Harry. Once we swallowed that hook, we were caught. With that accepted, everything else Moll threw at us was accepted, however unlikely or extreme. With Lemming, there's no first cause that makes sense or is believable. The hook we have to swallow is that Alain's hormone's will respond to the aging stimulus of Mrs. Pollack's unsmiling attempt at seduction, and that Alain's involuntary and momentary arousal makes him just as guilty as if he'd agreed to jump in the sack with her. Alain doesn't agree to do that, regardless of how a few hormones responded, because he honorably loves his wife. Moll needs a motivating cause for what he has in store for us. This isn't believable enough, but Moll doesn't seem to notice. He gives us a director's indulgence. Consequently, everything that follows is a director's indulgence, too.

The first 46 minutes of Lemming, even if not especially engaging, have a nice uneasiness about them, culminating in a genuinely unexpected action. From then on, however, I was never especially engaged in the creepy shenanigans of isolated cabins, dreams, waves of rodents, adultery, the Mini Flying Webcam, hints of the Exorcist, murder and even the origin of lemmus lemmus and how one got stuck in a drain in the south of France. All seemed to be manipulations of a director who, this time, might not have been as smart as he thought he was.

If Moll with his lemming wants to deal in metaphors, perhaps our metaphor should be the last thing we hear...Mama Cass and the rest of the Mamas and the Papas singing Dream a Little Dream of Me. It's a great song but we have it pasted a little pretentiously onto the end of a French psycho thriller. As hard as this is to say, Mama Cass doesn't exactly swing it.