Nocturama

Lost at the mall: Nocturama

Bertrand Bonello's Nocturama is a first rate art film that dares to explore terrorism shorn of ideological baggage. Both John Waters and Positif have characterized the film as irresponsible, though only Positif used the term pejoratively. Bonello is exploring the unconscious roots of terrorism in a surrealist manner much like Bunuel in his later, French language films. 

The first half of the picture shows the terrorists coordinating their bombing mission. They are shown conveying through Paris as if they are rats in a Google grid whether they are on the boulevards or in the Metro. They exude a sense of purpose which Bonello sketches in with flashbacks that offer glimpses of how this band of outsiders came to be. 

This sense of purpose collapses in the second half of the film when, after successfully completing their mission and bringing Paris to a standstill, they hole up in a high toned shopping mall to wait till the coast is clear. Things do not goes as planned. The terrorists succumb to anomie and anxiety before they more ultimately succumb. This is thanks to the faceless police force who have been given carte blanche to eliminate these enemies of the state. Bonello offers us a despairing portrait of an official France growing more authoritative whilst its resistance grows more feckless and divided.

Bonello has one of the terrorists allude to Nixon's toppling of Allende, but this is a red herring. More pertinent is the conversation about civilization succumbing to its own decadent forces and the glittering mall that houses Nocturama's last hour represents our culture at its most bewitching and vulgarly materialistic. There is a lot to chew on in Nocturama and I have only just started to masticate it, but I think it is the most accomplished and complex French film I have seen since Leos Carax's Holy Motors; a film to which it bears a faint resemblance. (4/3/18)