When a leftist terrorist organisation kidnaps the U.S. Ambassador to France, the French police employ their own, state-sanctioned form of terrorism to quell popular support for the anarchists. "Nada" is too complex a film to analyse succinctly here, but it sometimes felt like I was watching a Costa-Gavras political
thriller, as directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Certainly, Maurice Garrel, as a disillusioned revolutionary, masterminding the abduction out of loyalty to a still fanatical friend (Fabio Testi), has a Melvillian world-weariness/fatalism about him. The interesting relationship between Testi and Michel Duchaussoy, respectively the gang's leader and its former spokesman, expelled for ideological differences but loyally reticent under police torture, also smacks of Melville. However, the rich vein of black comedy running through the movie is unmistakably Claude Chabrol's. Detractors, who would have you believe that this director is merely a Hitchcock copyist, would do well to witness his brilliant handling of this film's two major set-pieces: the kidnapping scene and the police's retaliatory farmhouse siege. His matter-of-fact use of violence, particularly in the latter scene, is absolutely chilling. Of the superb cast, Maurice Garrel and Michel Aumont, who plays the canny but brutal policeman in charge of the case, are especially fine. A film ripe for rediscovery in these troubled times. I loved it!
May 17, 2008
