It would appear that either no one in the UK has watched this film or, if they have, have not seen fit to post a comment. When you append a note to a movie that it is 'based on real events' you can get away with just about anything. Nine times out of ten the 'real' events are both provincial and obscure and by definition known only to a few so that the filmmaker(s) - two in this case - can give free rein to their fancies. So here we have five inseparable young people, four male and one female with the four guys working as a reasonably successful boy-band and the girl functioning as a groupie in the sense that she has sex with all four, including her brother, Pierre, who, having been beaten to death, supplies what plot there is in the shape of Lucie (the girl, and his sister) engaging on an obsessive quest to discover the culprit or, as it transpires, culprits plural. The lyrical camera-work and almost mandatory nudity and simulated sex define it as 'art house' fodder and the non-linear unravelling of the plot confirms this status. Probably worth a look.

I shuffled into this film in a sur-le-vif kind of way, on a whim, while running about town. I was twenty minutes late. The young naked bodies thrown everywhere made a good impression. The protagonist girl, with her swarthy yet subtle, austere, French, and you can guess, sexual contradictory nature, energized me to some degree. The voice over, her running around with invective in her blood, trying to find out the murderer, energized me sexually even further, with just a tinge greater intensity than I would have been sensually energized if she had not been running around with such an imperative. The film has a calm energy which is interesting, viewed in this way. The sexuality does not have an energized imperative, as it does, perennially and ubiquitously, in all forms here in the United states.Which is nice. The orgy in which everyone participates is calm, so European, sex as it is perhaps among many sea turtles doing it, simultaneously. The murderers are found, the film finally ends in a French nihilistic sort of way. This is the way to enjoy this film, which is to say it is better to watch it for mood instead of story.

We're told this was based on a true story. Okay. The potential was there for a truly powerful, shattering film. Well, it isn't. However, I stayed glued to the screen due to the beauty of the cast. The girl, a throwback to the cookie females of the 60's and the boys one more cinematic than the other. It is difficult to guess - and why should anyone care - the intention of the filmmakers. An art film this is not and it's not a commercial venture, not really. If money was their objective they could have gone all the way. No. The film sort of works because one feels titilated by those eyes and those looks. So if their intention was to titillate they succeeded, big time. I wish this story could be re told with the same cast but with a great imaginative, powerful filmmaker at the helm.

We've all heard of a "ménage à trois." Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr's film One to Another/Chacun sa nuit presents a ménage à cinq, an ultra-photogenic one with four boys to one girl, all tanned, pretty, and hot to trot and in the summer in a beautiful southern part of France. At the center of the five is the insecure but magnetic lead singer of the clan's boy band, Pierre (Arthur Dupont) He's the bisexual brother of Lucie (Lizzie Brocheré), with whom he has a relationship just short of out-and-out incest. Nicolas (Guillaume Baché) is also bisexual, so he and Pierre have sex on the sly. Sébastien (Pierre Perrier), the prettiest boy of all, is Lucie's ostensible boyfriend, but she's had sex with the other two. Baptiste (Nicolas Nollet) is boy number four. It's not so good for the story but fine for the vicarious titillation value of the film that the clothes come off right away and there are many bed and swim scenes; and while there isn't much overt sex, there is much casual nude lolling around together among the nearly inseparable five. Pierre also has sex for pay with gay men and orgies with a local politico, and we get glimpses of that, too.In a story based on a real event in provincial France, this inseparable group of young beauties is shattered when Pierre is found dead, riddled with blows. The cops draw a blank and Lucie initiates her own investigation aided by the other boys. When the solution comes, the crime remains incomprehensible, even though who did it had become predictable.Pierre has an intensity you notice, and he sings. Lizzie Brocheré emotes, Guillaume Baché has a way of holding back that's arresting; but despite the film's obsessive concentration on these young people, they seem chosen not for their acting skill but because they're generically perfect looking, with the result that it takes much of the film to gather even a vague sense of what distinguishes one boy from the others.People are understandably enamored of One to Another/Chacun sa nuit for its lovely sensuality. From that point of view, it's a pleasure to look at. But the crime story and the beefcake are at odds with each other, the pretentious philosophizing of the young people is a poor substitute for acting, and the too-randomly inter-cut flashbacks after the death to flesh out the superficial portraits weaken the momentum of the hunt. According the Le Monde's reviewer Jacques Mandelbaum, One to Another "rises to the challenge of achieving a strong confrontation between the filmmakers' hedonistic philosophy and a barbarous act that resists it." Is it our Puritanical Anglo-Saxon culture? Somehow this seems unconvincing. But the images are beautiful. Jean-Marc Barr's second film was called Too Much Flesh. Hmmm…… Opened in Paris September 20, 2006. To be shown at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center March 7 and 10, and at the IFC Center March 8, 2007. US distributor: Netflix/Strand Releasing. Should do well in the DVD sales and rental market.