Like “Funny Games” if it have been one way or the other extra pointless, “The Birthday Party,” a country house invasion thriller by writer-director Léa Mysius, is a head-scratching letdown contemplating its forged, a assassin’s row of European stars that features Hafsia Herzi, Benoît Magimel and Monica Bellucci. It’s the third function by Mysius and her first time in Cannes competitors — a merited improve on the premise of her earlier movies, “Ava” (2017), an irreverent coming-of-ager with a punk-rock sensibility, and “The Five Devils” (2022), a witchy drama a couple of lady with a supernatural sense of scent. These movies scrambled style blueprints into dreamy sensory experiences, however little of that renegade vitality carries over into Mysius’ newest, an oddly lifeless — and worse, typical — crime story concerning the unearthing of buried secrets and techniques.
Asserting its hardcore aspirations with a moody steel-blue palette that suffuses the agricultural setting with dread, the movie takes place nearly fully on a distant cow farm, the house of a mixed-race household of three. Thomas (Bastien Bouillon), an affable dairy farmer, is more than pleased to let his spouse Nora (Herzi), a undertaking supervisor in a snatched ponytail and white stilettos, put on the pants.
He’s thrown off, nevertheless, when Nora loses her cool on the discovery that their younger, feisty daughter Ida (Tawba El Gharchi) has posted a video on social media of the trio dancing within the livestock steady. Ida is thrilled together with her viral second — the reel has pulled in over 60,000 viewers — and devastated when her mother forces her to delete it, although for causes but unknown to the remainder of her household, Nora is just too late in stopping its unfold. The following day, on Nora’s birthday, a shady gang of brothers arrive to, let’s say, “attend” the shock get together being thrown by Thomas.
Sole neighbor Cristina (Bellucci), an Italian painter and household buddy whom Ida routinely checks in with after college, is collateral. The 2 cronyish youthful brothers drive in with the transparently phony excuse that they’ve arrived to take a look at the true property, and shortly Flo (Paul Hamy) and Bègue (Alane Delhaye) have cornered Cristina and Ida in Cristina’s house, the dearth of music and Cristina’s open-studio abode giving their ready recreation an eerie undertow. Quickly sufficient, they’re joined by Thomas and oldest brother Franck, the brains of the operation, performed by Magimel in a tan swimsuit and semi-transparent shades— much less flaming psychopath, extra two-bit gangster given his Three Stooges-esque, family-run operation.
Magimel performs Franck with a menacing flamboyance paying homage to William Damage in David Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence,” which isn’t the one factor “The Birthday Party” shares with that 2005 basic. These plot echoes make Mysius’ French riff look extra-lackluster by comparability, although the slick familiarity of the situation will make it straightforward winnings for genre-oriented distributors. It’s a serviceable thriller, in some regards, however Mysius and her forged promise way over that.
When Nora lastly will get house from work, it swiftly turns into clear why she opted for countryside seclusion, and Herzi, together with her flinty gaze and pained, whispered supply, does a formidable job of carrying Nora’s disgrace with an equal dose of mama-bear rage and defiance. Mysius’ script, tailored from Laurent Mauvignier’s 2020 novel “Histoires de la nuit,” has a tough time delivering the story’s twists and revelations with actual warmth or suspense, buying and selling out simpler thrills for the noble, however in the end dreary, want to see out each side of the battle. Franck might have good causes to be terrorizing Nora’s household, however explaining them away solely flattens his character because the titular get together performs out like your common hostage situation, with just a few negligible tweaks and prospers.
Within the night, Nora’s coworkers Estelle (Servanne Ducorps) and Kim (Tatia Tsuladze) arrive, justifying a stretch of awkward play-acting on behalf of Nora and her household. In the meantime, a parallel (and far more fascinating) intrigue performs out at Cristina’s house, the place she’s being watched over by the least clever, most unstable of the three brothers, Bègue — a twitchy henchman whose a deficit of mind cells nearly makes him putty within the magnetic Cristina’s fingers.
The overlap of the 2 households, which presents an thrilling narrative risk, peters out with predictable cynicisms, whereas the climax is borderline comedic in its compelled symbolism about household bonds. Halfway by the movie, Bègue monologues concerning the unknowability of evil or what have you ever, with the occasions at Thomas and Nora’s home visualized through abstracted, anonymized impressions of the gamers there. No matter thriller is evoked by this unsettling speech goes out the door earlier than too lengthy — by the point the solar rises, we perceive far too clearly that there’s little left to really feel unsettled by.
