The film isn’t really fooling anyone into feeling doom-laden suspense (Paris, after all, is still standing), but the principal performers sell the momentousness of the drama.
The complicated psychological realities of army personnel require a tougher directorial treatment than the maudlin melodrama presented here.
The mannered direction is most effective when it inspires an enhanced sensitivity to the import of visual and vergal gestures.
The offhand jabs at the dissolution of orthodox craftsmanship in 1970s cinema are overwhelmed by a deeper core of autocritique played out in the film’s downward trajectory.
It bolts down a foreseeable slasher-movie trajectory, laying on thick the dramatic irony while constantly inventing new reasons to punish its characters for old iniquities.
For a life beyond mere DVD supplementary material, the film could use a dose of rigor to balance out its steady stream of congratulatory pit stops.
Never once does it project an intuitive understanding of how humans would behave or react in the midst of such a shattering misfortune.
Writer-director Louise Archambault’s neatly affirmative denouement is at odds with the more uncertain reality occurring at the edges of the film’s drama.