The Grim Cellar

2004, Belgium, Directed by Fabrice Du Welz

Colour, Running Time: 88 minutes

DVD, Region 2, Tartan, Video: Anamorphic 2.35:1, Audio: DTS

Having acquired something of a positive reputation following its rounds on the film festival circuit I thought it might be a good idea to belatedly check out The Ordeal (AKA Calvaire in its native land, actually a reference to the crucifixion). Whilst the plot on the surface may appear to be conventional, the end result couldn‘t be much further from it: singer/performer Marc Stevens finishes up a Christmas gig before leaving behind his legion of geriatric female fans to head off in his tour van to do another show miles away. He becomes hopelessly lost on the heavily fogged woodland roads and ends up breaking down in the middle of nowhere, rain pouring and darkness descending. A man appears at the van window, allegedly looking for his dog, but Marc persuades him to guide him to an inn that was advertised on one of the trees a few minutes previously. All seems amicable when Marc arrives at the inn, with a room prepared for the night, meals, and offers to help fix his truck. Things start becoming a little strange when the innkeeper, after towing back and investigating the van’s fault, says that it will take a couple of days to repair and begins asking Marc to sing for him at dinner. After Marc finds the rear doors to his van ripped open one morning and pornographic photographs of one of his fans missing (hidden in the innkeeper’s room) he realises something is wrong. After a confrontation the innkeeper begins smashing up the van with a sledgehammer before also hitting Marc unconscious, and thus on awakening begins a period of unimaginable torment for the singer that he may never escape from.

It’s not that often where I feel I’m the recipient of such a cinematic dropkick these days, especially with the abundance of torture stuff that masquerades as mainstream horror these days, but The Ordeal was precisely an ordeal, something which I became uncomfortable watching and actually couldn’t wait for the punishment to finish, plus it persists in remaining on the mind afterwards. Whilst it is slow and atmospherically built up early on, once we get to the point where we realise things are going to go horrifically wrong for Marc so begins our discontent also. Pretty much every character in this story is screwed up beyond belief (witness the moment Marc comes across a group of villagers ‘making love’ to some pigs), and to add to the force of delivery these people as realistically portrayed as one can imagine (presumably most viewers have never spent a week inside an asylum) - I don’t want to live in a world where this kind of human being is a possibility, but I probably do. Marc’s tribulations stem from the fact that everybody - everybody - in the cast wants him for one reason or another, whether the motive is innocent desire or homicidal madness. In this, and this is something that only really occurred to me retrospectively, there is an acknowledgeable element of black humour that threads certain aspects of this film, but it’s not something you’re likely to find yourself smiling about, unless you want to appear hip to your mates. As already suggested, there is the reminder of many of the torture films that have ‘graced’ our screens over recent years but bear in mind this was produced in 2004, the same year as Saw, so an accusation of jumping on bandwagons would be unfounded. Plus this film is far more disturbing than most of those in Saw’s wake, and without overt emphasis on gore either. The dinner table humiliation was, however, way too close to a similar sequence in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Laurent Lucas’s performance as Marc Stevens is too authentic, as with most of the insane cast that support him, and it was great to see Brigitte Lahaie still working (and not looking at all bad for her age) - of course she was the star of many a French porno film in her prime, including a number of Jean Rollin genre excursions (Fascination for example). The air of realism is also maintained by a couple of other factors: there is minimal use of film scoring, plus the image is very drab, colourless, and close to ugly. At first I thought it might just be the result of a mundane transfer but the film’s content ultimately makes one aware that the cinematography was almost certainly a creative decision. Whether this film can be recommended is down to viewer discretion really - it’s not something that is actually enjoyable, indeed I was bludgeoned somewhat by the experience and afterwards had to watch a couple of Looney Tunes cartoons so I didn’t go to bed having perverse nightmares. But it does a profound job of administering impact to its audience by use of superior film-making, downright nasty and remorseless intentions, plus a dose of imagination that would make it stand out from the crowd if it were not for the fact that it is foreign, and therefore having an inherently limited English-speaking audience.

As mentioned above the video is drab and not especially nice to look at, something I deeply suspect is part of the natural style of this movie. Detail in darker areas is subdued by grain, colours are muted, brightness diminished. This is accompanied by very able Dolby Digital and DTS French language soundtracks - little use of music to speak of but excellent standards of audio with sound effects and dialogue. On of the disc also is the 1999 short by the director called Quand On Est Amoureux C’est Merveilleux, the film that got him noticed. Despite the fact that I couldn’t wait for The Ordeal to be over I have to acknowledge that that’s because the director did a very good job, and I therefore await his next project, Vinyan, with a certain level of trepidation.