Persécution is a hard movie to describe accurately. It's the story of Daniel (Romain Duris), a loft renovator in Paris. Daniel is inordinately important to the people in his life, whom he mostly treats with what seems like hostility.He has an unstable relationship with his very independent girlfriend Sonia (Charlotte Gainsbourg). A stranger (Jean-Hugues Anglade) begins to stalk him, although in extraordinarily creative ways and without any threat or malicious intent. But the details of the plot really don't matter much. It's not really a story; it's an experience.This (like every earlier Patrice Chéreau movie I've seen - which are only L'homme blessé (which starred Jean-Hugues Anglade in his luminous youth), Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, and Son frère, but they're three of the most memorable movies I've ever seen) deeply challenges its audience in ways other directors' movies never do.It's impossible to watch a Chéreau movie without a completely open mind, free of every normal expectation: that you will understand it, that you will be able to empathize with ANY of the characters, that you will even know whether you like it or not.Chéreau, either intentionally or unintentionally, ALWAYS made movies that force the viewer to surrender control, to step outside everything familiar, to go wherever he leads without questioning where or why. Watching a Chéreau movie is more life-changing, more consciousness-expanding, more iconoclastic than entertaining.I LOVE that kind of challenge, I LOVE that kind of movie, and only Chéreau ever demanded so much from an audience. If you don't WANT to be challenged like that, if you don't WANT your mind and your world shaken to their foundations and rebuilt by someone else, then don't bother watching this amazing movie. You'll hate it.

It had to happen at some point: a review of a movie I did not like! It's my job to also present you movies you should not watch and tell you the reasons why... There I was, in my favorite DVD store, when I saw this French movie I haven't heard of before. The mysterious and intriguing cover with 3 very good actors (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Romain Duris, Jean- Hugues Anglade) and such a powerful title caught my eye and I thought I couldn't go wrong. Oh little did I know... This movie was both a waste of my time and money. I won't even bother watching the bonus DVD. What happened to the movie? Did the editor think he knew better and deleted the end of it thinking we would be clever enough to guess what this is about? Was it a poor screenplay to begin with? How come such actors signed up for it... Were they that desperate to pay the bills? Surely, the editing just changed the whole story... Right? The worst part of Persecution is that you do not get bored watching it because you are sure that the tension between the characters will end up being explained by a final twist. The suspense builds up when Daniel (Romain Duris) confesses at the kitchen table that his grandfather... went to church everyday! Jesus, what a twist! For 100 minutes you are evolving in a gloomy Parisian atmosphere but Romain Duris overplays and he becomes soon enough extremely annoying. You leave the room not knowing if Daniel is bipolar or has a douchebag disorder that forces him to treat people like fecal matter. This movie sure is independent and European and somewhat artsy but it forgot one essential thing: making sense!1 reason NOT to watch: Uh... There is no end!(?)

Patrice Chereau's latest film touches a lot of themes that evidently are dear to him. At the center of the story is Daniel, a man that is a a living contradiction, and who remains an enigma after all is said and done, because the viewer never finds a common trait of his in which to empathize with this strange man, even though he is the whole film.As the action begins, we get a glimpse of Daniel sitting in a crowded metro as a ragged panhandler goes through the car asking for money. No one seems to be moved by the woman's plight, much less give her a coin to get rid of her. As the beggar stands next to a young woman that looks up to the intruder with a smile, she responds with a slap on both her cheeks, something that leaves the people around them stunned. Daniel decides to find out what triggered the panhandler's reaction, but the young woman is not about to tell him anything.Daniel is a sort of remodeling contractor in to be a long distance relationship with Sonia, a thirtysomething woman that seems to talk to him more on the phone than in real time. When they see each other at a pub, they hardly show any tenderness for one another. To aggravate things, Daniel is surprised by a stalker that makes his way into the apartment he is working. Finding this intruder naked in bed, Daniel becomes furious when the man declares to be in love with him.Part of Daniel's problems might be related to his own family life. His father, now dead, had retired to a nursing home where he ended his days. Daniel decides to volunteer at one institution where we watch him tending to the needs of two of the residents, a painter and an old woman. Daniel surprises in the way he can be kind one moment and be dismissive of a friend, whom he disses at the pub to a crowd of friends. At the same time, Daniel is seen to go help the motorcyclist who suffers an accident right in front of his eyes, when no one intervenes.Patrice Chereau and Anne Marie Trividic's screenplay for this film wants to explore Daniel's soul and what makes him the contradiction he appears to be while searching for meaning in his own life. It is not an easy film to sit through, but it shows flashes of intelligence in the way one is never able to figure out people that have touched us. Mr. Chereau succeeds is in creating a complex character of Daniel, brilliantly acted by one of France's leading actors, Romain Duris.Whatever one's perception of the film, the acting of Mr. Duris alone is worth a look at this enigmatic man full of contradictions. Charlotte Gainsbourg appears as Sonia in a role that needed someone like her in order to make the character work. Ms. Gainbourg is an intelligent performer who gives a nuanced reading of Sonia, Daniel's girlfriend. Jean-Huges Anglade's stalker is perhaps one of the strangest addition to the picture. His motivations in zeroing on Daniel never comes to a head because Daniel shows repulsion to his advances. Others in the film in supporting roles, the great Tsilla Chelton, who plays one of the people in the senior residence, Gilles Cohen, and Michel Duchaussoy, as the painter in the nursing home.The film has a dizzying rhythm helped by the camera work by Yves Cape that captures a Paris we do not see often in movies. Eric Neveux contributed to the film score. Like him, or not, Mr. Chereau remains a voice to be reckoned with in the French cinema.

"Persecution: active, systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group or individual."After watching "Persecution", you might just wonder who is really persecuted: Daniel, the short-tempered main character, stalked by a stranger who claims he's in love with him, Sonia, Daniel's girlfriend with whom he argues frequently and can hardly connect, or simply the spectator. Watching a film like this is anything but a treat: unlikeable characters, stark settings, ugly photography, it is French "psychological" cinema at its worst. I don't have a problem with Chéreau, I understand he makes films for an adult and educated audience. Some of his daring choices (as in "Intimacy" for instance) are challenging but interesting, at the very least enough thought provoking to get something out of them. Unfortunately, "Persecution" is a pretentious and overblown piece of work, as if Chéreau gradually became more and more full of himself over the years to eventually forget one essential thing: the audience. "Gabrielle", released in 2005, was already a "stiff" and dry film, well played and well directed, yet haughty and cold. As Chéreau's works get more and more personal, spectators are more and more kept at a distance by the filmmaker. The problem is that films are made for an audience (even if it's not a broad one), not just for the pleasure of wasting money. When artists create works that not only have no appeal for most of the people, but also have seemingly no clear purpose, I believe they lose the sense of reality. I assume that is what happened to Patrice Chéreau, who has proved with other films that he is more than an able director. I don't mind watching a film where the main character is complex, obsessive and quite unlikeable (remember "Naked" directed by Mike Leigh). I don't mind watching wordy films (I've had my share of Woody Allen's and Eric Rohmer's flicks). But I resent films where I am left out, where the story has nothing to catch my attention. Romain Duris (who plays Daniel) is as convincing as a home renovator as Gérard Depardieu as a nun but is very good at getting on everyone's nerves, including the spectators', Charlotte Gainsbourg as the aloof girlfriend is remarkably dull, Jean-Hugues Anglade's intriguing character is sacrificed, secondary characters are not fleshed out as they should have been (poor Hiam Abbass has only a few lines to say). Even what would have been interesting leads were given up by Chéreau (for instance, we never know whether the stalker's character is a figment of Daniel's imagination or not, and that could have added an uncanny touch to "Persecution"). At its worst, the film is extremely repetitive when things begin quickly to stall. In spite of a good opening scene, I couldn't care less about what was going to happen to any of the characters. In other words, I never felt that "Persecution" was a movie really worth my time.