Don't Look Down (2019) User Reviews

A cinematographic theatre play

[FrenchEddieFelson · 4/10 · 30 August 2019]

This movie is conceived with the prescriptive theory of the Aristotelian unities: unity of time (one night), unity of place (an ultra-stylized neo-retro Parisian apartment) and unity of action (a collegiate desire for revenge). Thus, 4 gays and 1 straight woman sequester a 6th person within a specific room of the apartment, this John Doe being the only connection between these 5 tormented and narcissistic people: they all have been affected by a former relationship more or less in love, more or less perverse, more or less long with this Machiavellian John Doe, and they now plan to take revenge, without really knowing how and when.

A wordy and tiresome night, despite good dialogues and an excellent photography. 4/5 out of 10.

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[SteverB · 3/10 · 10 December 2023]

As another reviewer said, I too am interested in LGBT cinema, but I am not willing to acquiesce to ANY film that features LGBT themes, situations, and people. A quality film is important, too. This film had a seemingly interesting premise, five people (four gay men and one straight woman) are in a high-rise Parisian apartment, dealing with their upset over relationships each of them has had with a man who is secluded in another room of the apartment. Each of the players enter the room individually, while the remaining cast remains in the apartment, drinking champaign, making apple slices, passing around chocolate, and eventually when the food runs out, eating fried sardines. It seems the upset has to do with each person's humiliation and/or discovery that the relationship they each had with "the man who shall not be named" wasn't equal in that they each fell in love, while the other man was faking it.

From THAT premise, we have a filmed stage play filled with angst, oh, so much angst! The person in the other room, (tied up or something, we never find out) is the receiver of each of the players one by one going into the room alone with the man and coming out some time later. NOTHING about what happens in the room is revealed, as it's one of their "rules" for the evening. Meanwhile, they each reveal fantasies to each other or their various perverse (their word) desires. At the end, which someone opined should take your breath away, is yet ANOTHER soliloquy as the sun comes up over Paris.

There is no genius in not fleshing out the story. There is no mystery to any of these characters. I'd say they were pretentious, but they don't even rise to that level. They're young, but WAY too old to be dealing with whatever they're dealing with in this angst filled way. MOVING ON may have been an option! WHAT exactly did this "MAN" do to each of them? We never find out. Yawn.

I can't in good faith recommend this. It's ultimately boring and pointless. I learned nothing. The characters learned nothing. I don't see the point of this film.

Great Directors

[jromanbaker · 9/10 · 1 July 2020]

It is about time we all ( who are interested in world cinema ) wake up and realise that Ducastel and Martineau are great directors. I am interested in LGBT themed cinema and they have contributed more to that genre of cinema than many others who have the capacity to do so. I am English and also a Francophile and since this century began I have seen an advance in French cinema towards the complexities and diversity of homosexuality, and a few ' Out ' directors should have done better given the clout that they have. Not so Ducastel and Martineau. Both ' Felix ' ( bridging the centuries and ' Theo and Hugo ' are in my opinion great films. The seeming indifference towards this, their most recent film is an outrage. It is an enclosed film with a view of Paris and there is a lot of dialogue. ' Rear Window ', ' Huis Clos ' are both excellent films and are justly considered so, and even the semi-failure of Hitchcock's ' Rope ' has been appraised better than this film, and they are all enclosed in one room. So why the miserable rating ? I honestly have no idea why. The acting is perfect without exception, and every sexual and violent aspect is conveyed by words. It is a fine film because it explores between five strangers the nature of love and desire and the destruction as well as elation of how we experience both. They all seek ' revenge ' on a specific person who has tested them to the limit in humiliation and the expectancy of fulfilment who is in a room that we as viewers never enter. What are each of them doing to him ? Ducastel and Martineau have the genius to not show us, and our imaginings are left open. And the dialogue and the monologues are extraordinary, especially towards the end. High up above Paris this catharsis takes place and the ending is so superb it should take your breath away. See it if only for the various meanings we give to both love, fantasy and desire. My own criticism which prevents me from giving it a full 10 is the use of music which could have been used to stronger effect. But I may well be wrong about that and I will watch the film many times to in all probability change my mind.