Review: 57,000 Kilometers Between Us

Director Delphine Kreuter uses her silly streak to enforce simplistic narrative roles throughout the film.

57,000 Kilometers Between Us
Photo: Les Films du Poisson

It qualifies as an old-fashioned touch that 57,000 Kilometers Between Us is shot on 35mm film, since it belongs to the burgeoning online-life genre where characters are consumed and often defined by webcams, vlogs, and role-playing games. French teen every-girl Nat (Marie Burgun) and family are in thrall to her obsessive stepfather’s recording of every meal, outing, and occasion with his mini-cam for uploading to the household’s website; even Stepdad’s breathy, pre-coital whisperings of “je t’aime” to needy, emotionally masochistic Mom (Florence Thomassin) are staged for electronic consumption. (Disappointment follows when viewer emails read “perverse” and “Get your tits out.”) Nat copes by retreating to her garishly cluttered room for gaming and chatter with a gravely ill boy (Hadrien Bouvier) in a hospital, whose wealthy mother keeps her own monitor shut off so she doesn’t have to look at her dying son’s face. Delphine Kreuter, a prize-winning photographer directing her first feature, regularly keeps her handheld shots tight on the actors’ pores and gets sufficiently charming portrayals from young Burgun and Bouvier to frequently camouflage the script’s Sundancey quirk—not, however, when Nat’s transsexual natural father dons a chador to stash shoplifted goods or joins a pack of fellow glam MTFs for a boating excursion scored to a Dolly Parton cover of Bread’s “If.” Similarly, Mathieu Amalric’s glorified cameo as a thumbsucking baby-behavior fetishist is evidence that Kreuter uses her silly streak to enforce simplistic narrative roles: adolescent and gender-dysphoric cybernauts cool, all others ludicrous.

Score: 
 Cast: Florence Thomassin, Pascal Bongard, Marie Burgun, Hadrien Bouvier, Stephanie Michelini, Mohamed Rouabhi  Director: Delphine Kreuter  Screenwriter: Delphine Kreuter, Mathieu Lis, Emmanuel Finkiel  Distributor: Delphine Kreuter  Running Time: 82 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2007

Bill Weber

Bill Weber worked as a proofreader, copy editor, and production editor in the advertising and medical communications fields for over 30 years. His writing also appeared in Stylus Magazine.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.