The best thing about "The Killing Game" is probably that, for almost the entire running time, you don't know where the story is going. The negative effect of this is that, after a point, you may start getting impatient, expecting some sort of major plot twist which never comes. Nevertheless, the film is interesting for its uniqueness; I can't remember seeing anything quite like it. It shows how the link between art and reality works both ways: the artist is inspired by the reality he observes and transforms it into a heightened un-reality, while the audience in return is influenced by the art and, occasionally, prefers it to the banality of everyday life. All this is acted out by a fine quartet, and set mostly near an idyllic Swiss lake. By the way, Leonard Maltin's summary ("MYSTERY comic-strip writer comes up with his ultimate PUZZLER") indicates that he either never saw the film, or he has forgotten it completely. **1/2 out of 4.
2 Reviews
Unique film about the impact of life on art - and vice versa
gridoon202422 April 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Living vicariously
dbdumonteil23 October 2009
Alain Jessua is certainly the most underrated and the most overlooked of the post N.V. French directors .Brash,courageous,intelligent,adventurous and exciting,he was all this and more in his heyday (roughly from his debut to "Paradis Pour Tous" ):6 movies in total ,which is not much but all are original and different from all that was made in the sixties/seventies in France.
When I was a little boy,I wanted to be Tintin,and to live his life of adventures.
Bob,in "Jeu De Massacre " ,might have registered the same desire ,but his dreams have never faded away and now nearing thirty , when he meets two cartoonists (the man writes the scripts,the wife draws),he tells them he's been thru all the stories they have invented:as soon as he appears on the screen ,we feel how irrational Bob is .Michel Duchaussoy -who would be in two other Jessua movies:" Traitement De Choc" and "Armaguedon" as well as in some of Chabrol's best : "Que La Bête Meure" -his best part,IMO- and "La Rupture" - gives a tormented feverish performance;when he tells his imaginary adventures ,he uses the "Passé Simple" ,a tense you would not use in a conversation: it creates a gap between the narrator and what he is telling .
Bob has an over possessive wealthy mother with whom he lives in Switzerland in a desirable mansion by the Leman Lake .He invites the two artists who have understood that they can make money out of this mythomania .Next step will be writing a brand new comic strip which introduces a new hero ,some kind of "Super Bob" .It won't be long before the rich kid wants to become this superman .Little by little,the writer's wife,who draws the strip (the drawings are terribly dated ,Barbarella style ,but it inspires Bob's vital extremism)begins to feel like becoming herself the heroine of the story and she creates Helen ,Bob's partner in crime.But soon,being on the paper won't be enough...
Very ambitious,not always successful,easy to admire ,but not very palatable,"Jeu De massacre" introduces a disturbed hero whose inflated ego knows no bounds ;Jessua would treat the subject again with "Armaguedon" in which a man ,holding some second-rate position ,tries to draw the crowds' attention with bomb scares .
Who has never dreamed he became the hero of a movie,of a comic strip or a novel? If you hang on to this dream,you'll never grow up;and you know how it is painful growing up.
When I was a little boy,I wanted to be Tintin,and to live his life of adventures.
Bob,in "Jeu De Massacre " ,might have registered the same desire ,but his dreams have never faded away and now nearing thirty , when he meets two cartoonists (the man writes the scripts,the wife draws),he tells them he's been thru all the stories they have invented:as soon as he appears on the screen ,we feel how irrational Bob is .Michel Duchaussoy -who would be in two other Jessua movies:" Traitement De Choc" and "Armaguedon" as well as in some of Chabrol's best : "Que La Bête Meure" -his best part,IMO- and "La Rupture" - gives a tormented feverish performance;when he tells his imaginary adventures ,he uses the "Passé Simple" ,a tense you would not use in a conversation: it creates a gap between the narrator and what he is telling .
Bob has an over possessive wealthy mother with whom he lives in Switzerland in a desirable mansion by the Leman Lake .He invites the two artists who have understood that they can make money out of this mythomania .Next step will be writing a brand new comic strip which introduces a new hero ,some kind of "Super Bob" .It won't be long before the rich kid wants to become this superman .Little by little,the writer's wife,who draws the strip (the drawings are terribly dated ,Barbarella style ,but it inspires Bob's vital extremism)begins to feel like becoming herself the heroine of the story and she creates Helen ,Bob's partner in crime.But soon,being on the paper won't be enough...
Very ambitious,not always successful,easy to admire ,but not very palatable,"Jeu De massacre" introduces a disturbed hero whose inflated ego knows no bounds ;Jessua would treat the subject again with "Armaguedon" in which a man ,holding some second-rate position ,tries to draw the crowds' attention with bomb scares .
Who has never dreamed he became the hero of a movie,of a comic strip or a novel? If you hang on to this dream,you'll never grow up;and you know how it is painful growing up.
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