The Trilogy
dir. Lucas Belvaux
Plays Fri May 7-Thurs May 20 at the Varsity.
One of those gimmicky sells that American distributors love so much when it comes to subtitled fare, The Trilogy also happens to be one of the better ways to spend six hours at the moment. Made up of three distinct films with overlapping characters and interlocking stories, the whole thing sounds like an assignment for some advanced filmmaking course, perhaps writer-director Lucas Belvaux's final project. The three films cover three different genres, and it's all beautifully conceived and realized, even if drama and character development sometimes seem to be spread a little thin. Belvaux has populated his films with a great cross-section of characters, aided by a universally solid cast, and the whole thing is not so much a lesson in genre--as "thriller," "comedy," and "drama" are pretty vague descriptors--as it is in perspective. That is, unlike other technical exercises in genre we've seen recently, this one is more interested in life outside the walls of a darkened theater than it is in the conventions it adheres to, or deftly skirts.
The idea is kept simple, so as to maintain the hook. Drawing from one large pool of characters, each film focuses on a different subsection, for whom the story takes on the characteristics of different genres. On the Run is a thriller in which Belvaux himself plays Bruno Le Roux, an escaped convict and political radical with a history of violent civil disobedience; An Amazing Couple is a marital farce in which a loving husband and wife develop mutual suspicions of infidelity; After the Life is a pathos-filled drama about addiction, love, and codependency between a cop and a junkie, complete with an overwrought redemptive finale.
That's the sequence of The Trilogy playing at the Varsity; the order is decided by the distributors--not the filmmaker. Although Belvaux claims a slight preference for keeping the drama at the end, he seems otherwise ambivalent about order. Elsewhere, it's the comedy that starts things off, and because you can't watch these films without starting to examine the inner workings of these things, you'll probably decide a preferential order for yourself about halfway through After the Life, the drama, when you start checking your watch more frequently. Although the thriller is clearly the best of the lot, the comedy should be first (I say) because the excess of information upsets the delicate balance needed to put together a good gag. This kind of comedy depends on the careful withholding of information. Comedy works on a need-to-know basis, and the only way that could work positively in this case would be for gags to refer back to both their own movie and the one(s) that came before it. These films don't build on each other, though, but instead bounce off one another and add unexpected twists in meaning. They fill in holes you didn't even realize were there, and a comedy that doesn't know its place has to keep its commentary limited.
As genre films, these are only moderately successful. The thriller, though gripping, isn't exactly thrilling. The comedy, despite a few big laughs, isn't terribly funny. The drama doesn't seem, in comparison to the other two, to be all that dramatic. What Belvaux does exactly right, though, is take genre seriously. He doesn't try to use its outlines to rise above the conventions, or indulge in nostalgic kitschiness for its own sake. Any such pretension in an enterprise like this would sink the whole thing, and it's a serious inquiry into the nature of genre that thankfully avoids pastiche. What we have instead is Belvaux's organic creative processes spitting out films in these different styles, and each one is much more similar to the rest of the trilogy than it is to most everything else in its genre. And that might be what makes them so interesting.
Whatever it is that separates the movies into their respective categories, whether it's a bumbling husband or a well-stocked arsenal, dark, claustrophobic lighting or handheld camerawork, these differences are basically superficial. The genetic-level differences are all based in the flow of information. The amount of data you're fed by the movie, and the basic interpretations it supports, that's what pushes them into their separate genres. There's nothing inherently "thrilleresque" about On the Run, it's just that it only allows certain portions of the story into the film. If there's anything you should learn from this cycle, it's that anything can be anything; even though Belvaux goes with the most conventional choices, it's clear that it isn't a matter of one genre being the correct fit. Events repeat themselves from one film to the next, and each has the capacity to fit into any of the three genres. In other words, perspective is governed mainly by what we choose to share, or what we choose to notice. The main question is where to put the ellipses. What information are you holding back? Is it the kind that can turn laughter into tears?
Whether or not that was the filmmaker's intent, this comes across quite clearly as the Big Idea that holds the movies together, and it sets up the audience to analyze the way the films present each event and each character: to rip the top off and poke around for a while, see how it all works. As dry as that might sound for a six-hour experience (what, no dragons?), just realize how relevant this conception of information is. In a time in which media has invaded so much of our daily lives, I sometimes feel like I'm no more than a passive data receptacle. We need to realize that when we divide our perceptions into simplified genres or categories--"good," "bad," or whatever--a more complete portrait might change our perspective completely.
