Black Heaven (2010) User Reviews

Great game sequences, poor plot

[celr · 6/10 · 11 May 2011]

I loved the game sequences, you get the feeling they really captured the spirit of online gaming and the game world here is dark and compelling. The story has to do with sexual obsession, a boy falls for a tragic femme fatale who appears to be trying to commit suicide. The relationship is realized in part in the game world, a eerie cyber world called BlackHole where the mystery woman has a character called Sam. I found myself wishing there actually was such a game because the graphics were so beautiful in a haunting sort of way. The game in Black Heaven was much more interesting than the ugly game world realized in "eXistenZ".

Unfortunately, the backstory just doesn't live up to the potential of the fictional game and the ending is abrupt. Still, I found Black Heaven to hold my interest. Perhaps if the main character Gaspard (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) hadn't been played as such a dimwitted dork the mystery might have had more tension. As such he's way too passive and detached. This could have been a great thriller if more story action had taken place in that fascinating game world.

Interesting attempt that could have been better

[Samiam3 · 6/10 · 5 March 2011]

Praise Blue Velvet all you want, but you'll never hear me say it's a great movie. I think it's a good movie. Enter Black Heaven thirty years later, a little french movie that takes Lynch and goes Matrix with him. The result is intriguing to be sure in a kind of experimental way, well shot and scored, but in the end the movie is unable to surpass Lynch for two reasons. It feels too mannered and refined and it comes with a rushed finale.

Blue Velvet may have been ham fisted but Lynch was able to get some suspense and eroticism out of it. Black Heaven cools it down a little bit. On the positive side, we don't have to endure another Dennis Hopper 'attempt to steal the show' performance, but the movie kind of neglects to embrace what makes it different and potentially superior. Black Heaven, actually has something interesting going for it. Part of the movie plays out in a computer game, and there is the sense that Black Heaven could do something more exiting with the story, but it keeps everything neat and tidy, sometimes resorting to cheap measures. The movie ends way too soon. Just when it looks like Black Heaven might just turn up the heat, the game shuts down (so to speak) after a rather disappointing pay off.

Looking back, I'll say we have a curious and mystique little indie film, but it's not quite there.

Lynchian Contrivance

[sgcim · 5/10 · 5 February 2011]

If you're going to make a film, at least try to have a coherent story that will leave the viewer with a sense that something meaningful has happened. This film failed to do so, and seemed like it was written by an adolescent who was trying to emulate David Lynch, but lacked the maturity to carry it out. It starts with a Blue Velvet-like opening, with a young couple in the South of France,finding a cell phone that leads them to a young man and woman attempting suicide by pills and gas fumes in a car. The guy dies, but the young woman survives because they pulled her out of the car. They hear someone running away in the woods. The lead male character, Gaspard, finds a camera on the dashboard that has filmed the would-be suicide, pockets it and takes it home and views it. He is smitten by the blonde woman would-be suicide, and tries to find out who she is by a reference to a virtual reality program the couple mentioned before they tried to end it all. He goes with his friends to smoke some dope in an apartment where the mysterious blonde and her brother happen to live. ****SPOILER***

I could go on and fill in the rest of the story, but let's just say Gaspard rejects his girlfriend and goes after the blonde, only to find out her brother is using her to lure suicidal men to their doom so he can film their suicides. Huh? Are we supposed to believe that she has done this before and survived, when she would have died if Gaspard hadn't pulled her out of the car? Are we supposed to believe that the only way he can satisfy this fetish(?)is to have his sister kill herself? What is this movie trying to say? It ends with Gaspard crying in the police station and telling his original girlfriend he really loves her. The film had good acting, great animation, an electronic music score with some catchy pan-diatonicism, and was shot and directed very well; too bad a better story line couldn't have been worked out.

Avoid don't fall for the sexy back in the poster

[saadgkhan · 4/10 · 9 April 2012]

L'autre Monde – Black Heaven – TRASH IT (C+) L'autre Monde is a weird exotic French movie about a boy getting obsessed with the suicidal girl. The beginning of the movie is interesting and it seems very real but once the whole Black Hole game starts it kind of put the movie into another track. The Black Hole Tron lookalike scenes are not interesting, it's kind of weird. Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet is good but there is nothing much he could have done in it. Louise Bourgoin is exotic and Pauline Etienne is cute. On the whole L'autre is a perfect French movie everyone should avoid as it ruins the concept of the French movies.

The Other World

[martin-s-osuna · 12 September 2011]

As you all may already know, the original name of this film is The other world (in french off course) and that i think, is exactly the main idea of this film, but I'm not talking about "Black Hole" which is only the door for Gaspard, the door that leads to that other world where nothing/nobody is clear nor innocent, i love the way how this movie transforms from a romantic teenage naive story to this dark strange hybrid that turns out to be, so in my opinion the movie succeeds in showing us Gaspard's trip to that other neighbor complex almost non-moral world of Audrey and Vincent. I think Black heaven is an interesting different movie, it is fun, it is clever at parts and is well done, ironically it is still a bit naive even during its darkest moments.

Awesome movie

[Dave_douell · 7/10 · 25 November 2018]

I'm going to make this short and sweet. The movie was so good, I have to say a couple of things. The girl Audrey and Gaspard were both pieces of crap. She finally got what she deserved after helping her brother kill who knows how many people. Too bad Gaspard didn't jump next! (I hate that guy!!) I guess at the quarry her psycho brother was supposed to save her and leave Dragon but Gaspard beat him to it. The award for biggest idiot goes to Gaspard's girlfriend. Even hinting that she forgave him and got back together is a damn shame. Marion was so much better than Gaspard or Audrey in every way!

Not worth 2021

[ayushbakshi · 1/10 · 3 August 2021]

No story. Few game seqs only good for 2010. PS2 graphics.. Just a cry boi and insane (peeli wali, Audrey) girl.

**SPOILER** Audrey's brother likes drawing.

Pretty, pretty....pretty good!

[aob_brctor87 · 7/10 · 15 March 2024]

I found myself doing a Larry David impression when the credits rolled. I liked it but have no plans of watching it again. I don't feel there is anything to gain upon a second viewing.

I can't stand video game movies (where someone gets stuck inside one) but this one is different. The VR game isn't even the focus of the story nor is anyone stuck in it.

Rather it's a tool used for abuse and power.

Power over lives that is. Pushing folks to suicide (which has happened in real life) by talking them into it and such.

This movie has a similar plot to Blue Velvet. It has a naive young man who ditches his loving girlfriend to pursue a dangerous woman, with an even more dangerous boyfriend who abuses her.

It never reaches that films level. Instead it plays it safe, and I don't like safe.

But I do like a good story which this is. Just not a "great" one.

The climax is the nail in the coffin

[LBarlane24 · 4/10 · 31 January 2024]

Directed by Gilles Marchand, Black Heaven is a 2010 French film that stars Louise Bourgoin and an actor whose name is too long for me to even write.

According to Wikipedia (and I quote), "It tells the story of Gaspard, who is lured by a beautiful girl into an obsessive, deadly video game." With a premise like that, you have to TRY to make the execution vapid.

The writing falls flat (literally and figuratively) and the characters are either bland or one-dimensional. The leading lady was especially the latter, serving only as EYE-CANDY for the majority of the film, up until the climax.

Long story short, the brother of the blonde lady forces the protagonist up a building with the intention of pushing him off (something about a s8!c4de pact), which leads the blonde lady to jump off the building instead; the next thing we know, she's Humpty Dumpty. Now you could argue that she only did it to save the protagonist. But the way I see it, this was scraping the bottom of the barrel on the writers' part and their (sick) attempt to romanticize the S-word!

For my verdict, this film had potential to be interesting. But because of the dreadful script, it falls flat on its face. And the one person who really deserved better was the leading actress, Louise Bourgoin, since she had practically nothing to work off of; do yourself a favor and watch her in The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec instead!

I'm giving Black Heaven 4.7/10.

Unique and well portrayed . . . a dark twist of a cyber space story

[charles000 · 8/10 · 7 July 2011]

This work was surprisingly well done, in various ways. Some of the other reviews I have read tend to make note of how unusual it might be that a young fellow would become "fatally attracted" (that's not a spoiler) as it were to a virtual entity in cyber space, to the point of abandoning his current girlfriend in the real world.

Actually, that aspect has more parallels in the real world than some may realize. Having been acquainted with the virtual reality / cyber space avatar development domain for well over a decade (I was one of the early "residents" in Alpha World), and looking at examples such as 2nd Life currently, there are real examples of people who become completely consumed with their virtual existence, to the point of losing connection with the real world.

This is not entirely unusual, so it was not that much of a stretch to identify with the story portrayed here in Black Heaven.

The interesting twist is how the "Sam" avatar character had her live counterpart in the real world, and she would ensnare real people into committing, well, let's just say, extreme acts of devotion . . . and I won't say much more than that . . . which translated into and through consequences in her avatar world.

It's a good story, very unique and well portrayed. It's not a flashy special effects extravaganza, though the virtual reality scenes are nicely done, but it is definitely a thinking person's film. I thoroughly recommend it as an interesting example of this genre'.

Very interesting drama

[maxikompel · 8/10 · 12 June 2011]

L'autre Monde is a French drama which starts with the life of two "teens" (boyfriends) and they find a cellphone of an unknown person. They start to get involved in her life and the things she does, this will take Gaspard to find a virtual online game (the title of the movie refers to this game) and the plot will get so much exciting. I really liked this movie because I think it is very interesting and cool the story and how the facts happen over the course of the plot. To talk about the actors i have to say that i really love Louise Bourgoin in all the senses, it is really one of my favorite actresses, and this movie is not the exception. I really enjoyed it and I hope you too, i give it an 8/10. regards. maxi0305

Another Paradise - A great story

[tarzandavid1 · 19 November 2011]

To reply sgcim ,

(Warning:SPOILER below) 1."Are we supposed to believe that she has done this before and survived, when she would have died if Gaspard hadn't pulled her out of the car?"

A: Yes, I believe Audrey and her brother have done this a couple of times before and she survived a couple of times as well, because she does wanna die at all -- she is doing this to fulfill the previous guys'suicide will and her brother's "Satisfaction" ,and he doesn't want her die either -- they love each other deeply.

Anyway,Vincent is a super freak and obsessed in "helping" others "commit suicide" -- under the help of his sister Audrey, who was almost fully brainwashed and controlled by him. While Audrey is a bit kind than her brother that she finally killed herself for being tired of all this -- especially by seeing Gaspard gonna be killed by her brother, while she know Gaspard does not wanna commit suicide at all.

Also,I think In the game the brother kept playing his sister's role -- Sam,and seduce those who are tired of living to come out and meet Audrey to commit suicide "together".

2. What is this movie trying to say?

A: Everybody has a " Black Hole "in his/her mind, if he/she go deeply into it and be obsessed, then may become the slave of his/her original desire and go to extreme...

Besides,I think the director strongly hold a negative opinion on online video games, which (he may believe)inspired our evil and original desires -- like violence and eroticism, and he just want us to stay away from it, coz the whole story is basically about a young guy betrayed his gf and followed his original desire then being involved in all this mess,but finally got forgiven after crying in the police station... (the plot in the end is really a bit abrupt and naive.)

In a word, it's an interesting movie, fantastic animation!