User Reviews

Less a nail-biting thriller than its punchy-but-misleading English title, "Lights Out", would suggest, "Simon Werner a disparu..." is a carefully constructed mood piece. Using the sudden disappearance of popular high school student Simon Werner as a backdrop, writer/director Fabrice Gobert explores the insular world of high school gossip and suspicion where rumours spread fast, students dwell on the sinister, morbid and absurd, and not even an ostensibly dead classmate can distract from a fascination with sex and partying and a disdain for schoolwork, teachers and parents.

Seemingly everyone in Simon Werner's class is leading a double life, and Gobert re-frames the days leading up to Werner's disappearance from the perspective of four of his classmates, showing us how they interact to each other's faces and behind each other's backs. Almost anyone could be implicated in the disappearance, and the constant presence on school grounds of a police investigation into Werner's whereabouts adds to the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia.

Gobert keeps the film minimal where it counts, and the result is tightly-scripted and avoids unnecessary sprawl despite its multiple protagonists and interwoven subplots. Sonic Youth's distortion-heavy score and the film's minimal colour palette and late-Autumn backdrop of a 1990s suburban high school surrounded by dense forest gives the film a visual, tonal broodiness that complements its themes. The result is subtle and atmospheric, if not occasionally light on plot, and with a twist ending that underscores the restlessness and capriciousness of its characters and their relationships.

In 1938, Christian-Jaque made a famous mystery movie entitled «Les disparus de Saint-Agil». Seven decades later, a young filmmaker named Fabrice Gobert undertook the writing and the filming of «Simon Werner a disparu ...», a film that cannot exactly be called a remake but that presents more than one common point with Christian-Jaque's classic. The location is the same (a middle school in «Les disparus...»; a high school in «Simon Werner...», both situated in the Paris region) . They have a similar starting point (three pupils disappear in both stories) ; either film reveals young talents (Jean Claudio, Serge Grave, Robert Rollis in «Les disparus...»; Jules Pélissier, Ana Girardot, Arthur Mazet, Selma El Mouissi in «Simon Werner...» ). Last but not least, the two films show that appearances are misleading and have a surprise ending.

Of course 2009 has not much to do with the late 1930s and the treatment given to the two stories is logically very different. While Christian Jaque's film is a delightfully old-fashioned thriller, Fabrice Gobert's is an attempt at describing the young people of today; their centers of interest and their insecurities, particularly as concerns the things of sex in general and homosexuality in particular. Among these young people, many have a crude language, show off as much as they can but neither for them nor for the more shy or discreet is this period of life (the characters are in their final year of secondary education, so about seventeen or eighteen) a pleasure cruise. Which gives "Simon Werner a disparu..." a more psychological and sociological aspect than "Les disparus de Saint-Agil" whose heroes are younger, making Christian Jaque's film lighter and more playful but less profound.

Another major difference with "Les disparus" is the construction. Traditional in the old film, it is more elaborate in "Simon Werner". Indeed before the truth is revealed in the contemporary movie, Fabrice Gobert will have told the story four times, the same situation being seen through the eyes of four different characters, each time bringing new information to the viewer, either bridging a gap or invalidating what has previously been mistaken for an established fact. This device, in addition to being mind stimulating, enables the director to show four different facets of his talent, as each segment is filmed in a specific style, in keeping with the disposition of the character witnessing the facts.

But where both films finally meet is when they alert the viewer to the danger of judging by appearances. Several characters in both movies (I will not tell you which ones not to spoil your pleasure) are suspected for reasons that are only apparently good. Some facts are misinterpreted. All this is good for suspense but also helps the viewer to question themselves and to avoid hasty judgment.

All in all, " Simon Werner a disparu...", Fabrice Gobert's commendable first feature film can boast an intelligent thought-provoking script, a talented direction and a very good cast (the always reliable Serge Riaboukine as the gruff physics teacher and a lot of new young talents). Which are three good reasons to go and see it.

Who Killed Simon Werner? becomes the underlying premise of a film that may set expectations of a gripping whodunnit in the same flavour and delivery as Rian Johnson's Brick, but alas this film by debut writer-director Fabrice Gobert is anything but your standard mystery to solve, set in a Parisian suburb school where the schoolmates of Simon get prime time in what would be a social commentary of sorts on the dynamics of youths in the 90s,

Its English title Lights Out bears not much of a meaning to the film, as what Gobert had revealed during the Q&A session that followed, and its French title which directly translates to Simon Werner has Disappeared, may have been a more powerful one even though it may be a little bit chunky, because that's how the story is set up from the start, with a discovery of a body during a teen party, before it flashes back to some 10 days before the finding. And it does so in a total of four times, each time taking on the perspective of different characters all revolving around a similar timeline and spatial distance, from football lad Jeremie (Jules Pelissier), to the school flower Alice Cartier (Ana Girardot) who had just broken up with Simon, to Rabier and finally Simon himself.

It brings us back to the time of playground politics back in school, where cliques form and students hanging out normally talk a lot of trash. Gobert's story and dialogue is top notch in this aspect, keeping it all very real and perhaps this was also made more believable through the use of very raw and new actors who act with abandon without a care in the world, just as their characters in the prime of their lives would have adopted. They talk bad about others, make fun of those deemed of a different league, have this constant fixation about girls and sex, and just about having little respect for any authority.

Each separate narrative thread provides perspective from a particular character's viewpoint, at times debunking some of the long held beliefs or baseless rumours that spring up in the earlier threads, iron our inconsistencies or reinforces certain facts that the audience can use to piece the puzzle together, as more and more students disappear one after another, building upon the mystery and perhaps our perception that there's a serial killer or kidnapper on the loose, and someone could be directly involved! Gobert keeps the viewer active in paying attention to little clues and things said, as we work things out in real time, like a police investigations drama where we're deep into the scheme of things and have the advantage of linearly reconstructing evidence, how everything would fit together, waiting for that pat on the back if we were to get it right.

To say any more will be to spoil the story for any intended viewer. This film is essential viewing even if the ending may be a little bit of a letdown without the usual build up and crescendo that its genre peers almost always like to slip into. Lights Out completes its cycle in a rather matter-of-factly fashion, very much in line with how mainstream papers' delivery of grisly news is compared to tabloid sensationalism which some will have to admit is what makes things interesting, at the expense of others. Ultimately it's a story about perception and how things that we perceive rightly or wrongly, can so easily be treated as facts without rigorous verification, and reminds us of the usual mantra of not counting chickens before they hatch and not to judge anyone based on appearances alone which is always deceiving.

And yes the awesome soundtrack by Sonic Youth will be reason enough to watch this in the first place, this being a tremendous first time effort in terms of narrative complexity, message and technical delivery.

This is a pretty entertaining French murder-mystery revolving around a series of disappearances of three teenagers in a French suburb, and the effect it has on their group friends. It is not your typical police procedural since the focus is almost entirely on the teenagers with adults largely relegated to roles of potential suspects and potential red herrings. It's not your typical teen movie either (at least in Hollywood sense) because it's more dark and disturbing with more adult content and much more SOPHISTICATED plot. The narrative structure is kind of reminiscent of the 1950's Stanley Kubrick film "The Killing" with the movie going back four different times to show the perspective of four different characters. The narrative threads do overlap in places, but they also act as different pieces of an intriguing puzzle that eventually form a more-or-less complete picture at the end.

The actors in this typically look a little long-in-the-tooth to be actual teenagers. One of the male actors (Arthur Mazet) I recognized from his lead role as the hapless young protagonist in the French comedy "Sea, No Sex, and Sun" and he really doesn't fare any better here. Ana Giradot, who plays the pretty, popular girl, would go on to a young adult role in the acclaimed French TV series "The Returned" (which unlike this movie, is easily available in the US). One of the other major actresses (Selma El Mouassai) is unusual in that she is slightly overweight, and while not necessarily unattractive in reality, is downright hideous by Hollywood and the usual French movie standards. Audrey Bastien, who plays the girlfriend of the missing "Simon" of the French title, is very attractive by ANY standards and I would expect to see more of her in the future.

This an entertaining movie and definitely worth watching. I hope it makes it to the US some day.