Nocturama (2016)

Nocturama, in which our protagonists are teenage terrorists who detonate a series of bombs throughout Paris, should, at the very least, be controversial and provocative. But this deadening picture does the seemingly impossible, turning its dangerous concept into a stultifying bore.

The first 40 minutes or so of Nocturama are almost wordless, consisting solely of the teens (racially and seemingly socio-economically diverse) traveling throughout Paris to plant explosives as part of an intricate plan. They communicate via silent glances, open locked doors for one another, toss cell phones in the trash, and brandish guns. Writer/director Bertrand Bonello’s strategy is to throw us directly into the action, employing the biases of P.O.V. to force us to identify with these characters before we realize the scope or consequence of their actions. It’s a fascinating idea, but Bonello fails unequivocally in execution. His depiction of the aspiring radicalists’ scheme is an unfortunate catch-22 – you could forgive it for be unconvincing if it was artful, and you could forgive its sleek sterility if it was convincing. It’s neither. And without any insight into the characters or any aesthetic charm to the storytelling, it’s simply tedious. And long. Very, very long.

Eventually, their plan finally set into motion, the teens hole up as planned in an evacuated shopping mall for the night. Why do they choose such an illogical, conspicuous location? Because it provides Bonello with plenty of low-hanging symbolic fruit for vague statements about consumerism and conformity, all shamelessly lifted from the now almost 40-year-old Dawn of the Dead (while we’re making unflattering comparisons, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Third Generation is a far more insightful and bitterly funny examination of ideologically barren anarchist cells).

We don’t really care what happens to these kids because we’re never given any reason to and, by now, we’re just praying for Nocturama to mercifully end. Shockingly enough, viewers may be hard pressed to even work up a reaction to the destruction and death enacted by these affectless kids stalking the showrooms of deserted department stores and listening to awful music. Taste and morality aside, Nocturama’s worst crimes are of the cinematic variety.