This movie inspired from actual events reminds me another film just released; guess what: 24 JOURS, the story of the abduction, torture and killing of Ilan Allimi, also a true event occurred in 2006. The schemes are very alike but not filmed in the same way. The Alexandre Arcady film is more tense, more suspenseful. And that doesn't reduce the efficiency of the Tavernier's piece of work. I like both. They are just made in two different ways. That's all. More than eighteen years are between the two of them. the best would be to watch them both one after the other, to compare at the best. A very interesting experience.

Maybe the title of the movie misled some viewers, Tavernier's "Bait" is not a common "thriller". The plot is indeed quite loose, the relationships between the characters are not a pretext for great drama, and you will hear no loud orchestral music in the climax (because there is no climax). Yet the emotion is here, thanks to the charm and subtle portraying of "Nathalie" by Marie Gilain (the rest of the cast is very good too). The great strong point of the movie is to smash every cliché about violence in modern society. Tavernier does a kind of "movie about movie viewers" (the youngsters watch a De Palma's "Scarface" video over and over) and in the French reality, violence is not exciting, not graphic, not choreographic, only real... The characters are even able to close their eyes on their own violence very efficiently as if nothing really happened while it's possible to avoid it's consequences... This kind of "modern" approach is really hard to achieve unless the directing is really good, and many bad directors tend to use the same tricks, such as hand held camera, etc... some other can't help emphasizing too much on the darkest aspects of the human nature, but here, on the contrary, there's a positive energy that flows from the characters (which makes the meaning so ambiguous and interesting) and as for the directing, the free but controlled camera moves and the general pace of the movie, gives it an elegant style which serves the script.

"Fresh Bait" is all about a beautiful 18 year old French "good time girl" who becomes involved in a scheme which her boy friend hatches to get capital to start a retail business in the US. Things go wrong resulting in murder and more. This flick offers good but not great casting, direction, production value, etc. but fails in story. Not suited to any genre, "Fresh Bait" plods along with too much redundancy, runs too long, bogs down in miscellany which doesn't propel the plots forward, and becomes so ludicrous as to be funny when it's supposed to be serious. Only the very poignant final scene reveals the serious nature of the film which it failed to develop during it's run time. Passable stuff only for French film buffs who've seen all the good stuff. (B-)

Marie Gillain is excellent as Nathalie in this Tavernier's drama. Not one of his best by the way. In this genre, see Requiem for a Dream which is a lot better.Out of 100, I gave it 74. That's **½ out of **** stars.Seen at home, in Welland, on November 26th, 2001.