Martyrs (2008)

Note des utilisateurs:

7.1/10   

Réalisateur:

Pascal Laugier

Scénariste:

Pascal Laugier (writer)

Release Date:

3 septembre 2008 (France)

Genre:

Drame | Horror

Accroche:

They did not finish to be alive...

Plot:

A young woman's quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child leads her and a friend, who is also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity. |

Plot Keywords:

Child Abuse | Revenge | Victim | Shroud | Female Nudity

Awards:

1 nomination

Avis des utilisateurs:

Martyrs establishes itself as the inevitable nadir of French horror cinema

Ensemble

Morjana Alaoui	...	Anna
Mylène Jampanoï	...	Lucie
Catherine Bégin	...	Mademoiselle
Robert Toupin	...	Le père
Patricia Tulasne	...	La mère
Juliette Gosselin	...	Marie
Xavier Dolan	...	Antoine (as Xavier Dolan-Tadros)
Isabelle Chasse	...	La Créature
Emilie Miskdjian	...	La Suppliciée
Mike Chute	...	Homme / Bourreau
Gaëlle Cohen	...	Femme de main
Anie Pascale	...	La femme
Jessie Pham	...	Lucie Jeune
Erika Scott	...	Anna Jeune
reste de la distribution par ordre alphabétique:
Hervé Desbois	...	Orderly
Philippe Laugler	...	Inspector
Louis Thevenon	...	Homme de main

Réalisé par
Pascal Laugier

Scénaristes (in alphabetical order)
Pascal Laugier		writer

Produit par
Frédéric Doniguian	....	executive producer
Marcel Giroux	....	executive producer
Richard Grandpierre	....	producer
Simon Trottier	....	producer

Musique originale
Alex Cortés
Willie Cortés

Image
Stéphane Martin
Nathalie Moliavko-Visotzky

Montage
Sébastien Prangère

Distribution des rôles
Helene Rousse

Création des décors
Jean-Andre Carriere

Maquillage
Benoît Lestang	....	special makeup effects artist

Directeur de production
Daniel Langlois	....	unit manager
Doris Yoba	....	post-production supervisor

Assistant réalisateur
Nadine Brassard	....	second assistant director
Carl Roméo Desjardins	....	first assistant director

Art Department
Yves Fontigny	....	property master
Asuka Sugiyama	....	art department coordinator

Technicien du son
Nicolas Becker	....	foley artist
Germain Boulay	....	supervising sound editor
Philippe Mercier	....	sound mixer
Serge Rouquairol	....	sound editor
Julien Sicart	....	additional sound
Steven Utt	....	sound editor
Jérôme Wiciak	....	adr mixer
Jérôme Wiciak	....	foley mixer
Jérôme Wiciak	....	sound re-recording mixer

Effets spéciaux
Carmelle Beaudoin	....	special effects technician
Kevin Carter	....	special effects contact lenses
Jacques Godbout	....	special effects supervisor

Visual Effects
Eric Aubry	....	digital effects artist
Marie-Eve Bedard-Tremblay	....	visual effects coordinator
Benoit Blouin	....	digital effects artist
Francois Croteau	....	digital effects artist
Daniel Gaudreau	....	digital compositor
Jonathan Laborde	....	digital effects artist
Bruno-Olivier Laflamme	....	digital effects artist
Jean-Francois Lafleur	....	digital effects artist
Pierre-Simon Lebrun-Chaput	....	visual effects supervisor
Laurent Spillemaecker	....	digital compositor: Buzzimage
Emily Vaillancourt	....	visual effects
Yanick Wilisky	....	visual effects producer: Buzz Image Group

Cascadeur
Alain Bérard	....	stunt double
Gaëlle Cohen	....	stunt coordinator
Nathalie Girard	....	stunt double
Stéphane Lefebvre	....	assistant stunt coordinator

Camera and Electrical Department
Alexandre Léglise	....	assistant camera
Geoffroy St-Hilaire	....	steadicam operator: "b" camera

Editorial Department
Denis Bedlow	....	assistant editor
Johan Boulanger	....	assistant editor
Frederic Jupin	....	digital conformation
Trevor White	....	colorist: Technicolor Toronto

Transportation Department
Richard Chabot	....	unit driver

Divers
Kook Ewo	....	title sequence by
Sophie Lebeau	....	assistant accountant
Pierre Selinger	....	production attorney
Joe Sisto	....	legal services
Lucio Tomaro	....	location manager

Thanks
Dario Argento	....	dedicatee
Karim Hussain	....	thanks

Production Companies

• Canal Horizons
• Canal+
• CinéCinéma
• Eskwad
• TCB Film
• Wild Bunch

Distributors

• Bir Film (2008) (Turkey) (all media)
• Cinema Mondo (2008) (Finland) (all media)
• Cinéart (2009) (Belgium) (theatrical)
• Cinéart (2009) (Luxembourg) (all media)
• Cinéart (2009) (Netherlands) (all media)
• King Record Co. (2009) (Japan) (theatrical)
• Kojo Pictures (2009) (Australia) (all media)
• Paradox Entertainment Group (2009) (Canada) (DVD)
• Quality Films (2008) (Mexico) (all media)
• Senator Film (2008) (Germany) (all media)
• Seville Pictures (2009) (Canada) (all media)
• Weinstein Company, The (2008) (USA) (all media)
• Wild Bunch Distribution (2008) (France) (all media)

Technicien des effets spéciaux

• Buzz Image Group

MPAA:

Rated R for disturbing/severe aberrant behavior involving strong bloody violence, torture, child abuse and some nudity.

Durée:

99 min

Pays:

France | Canada

Langue:

Français

Couleur:

Couleur

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Classification:

France:-16 (re-rating on appeal) (with warning) | France:-18 (original rating) | Switzerland:18 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:18 (canton of Vaud) | Finland:K-18 (self applied) | Germany:18 (SPIO/JK) (uncut) | UK:18 | Canada:18+ (Quebec) | Canada:R (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Nova Scotia/Ontario) | Australia:R | USA:R (edited version) | Netherlands:16 | USA:Unrated (uncut) | Italy:VM18 | South Korea:18

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Québec, Canada

Company:

Canal Horizons

Anecdotes:

In Pascal Laugier's previous film Saint Ange (2004), the main character is called Anna Jurin. In Martyrs, Anna is one of the female leads' character names, whilst Lucie Jurin is the other.

Soundtrack:

My Neighbourhood

Martyrs establishes itself as the inevitable nadir of French horror cinema

Leave it to some French guy who's made two different 'making of' featurettes for the same movie (that is not even his) to take the budget awareness and limited scope of last year's smash hit A L'INTERIEUR and turn it into a haphazard gorno that has none of the European flair of the former.

To paraphrase MST3K, it's movies like this that make me think a law should be passed dictating that horror films should be made by filmmakers, not just any hack trying to get his foot in the business and make a quick buck.

There's absolutely no talent involved in front or behind the camera. A scene of our foolhardy heroine opening a hatch and descending a collapsible staircase gets more than 20 edits. Why? If a mundane, transitional scene like that gets 20 how much would an action scene get, 200? The ludicrous amount of needless edits not only reveals the insecurity of a director who should be already past that point in his career but also a basic inability to pace a film. Peckinpah didn't shoot THE WILD BUNCH in slow-motion from start to finish, so why are you shooting some gal opening a hatch like it's an action scene?

And this hopeless individual doubletimes as the writer. Between an opening "home movie" excerpt that seems to be aping the beginning of TCM74 a little too close for comfort (chalk it up to homage as is the vogue of the times), two scenes with our soon-to-be protagonists as children, the mandatory 15 Years Later jump forward, one half of a film that walks the rope between 'home invasion' and 'slasher' and the second, a plot less final half hour of gratuitous torture, and it's not hard to see that Martyrs amounts to little more than ideas and vignettes a film school freshman gleefully jotted down on a napkin after a couple of joints.

If Hostel preyed on America's newfound sense of xenophobia, Martyrs seems to do the same for the real life atrocities that scarred Europe in the 20th century. Are we supposed to ignore that the emaciated 'martyrs' of the movie look so much like Holocaust victims? That the dead are tossed in mass graves like animals? The totalitarian notions invoked by a secret society of white upper-class elite torturing human beings in their basements?

After a halfhearted attempt to justify the degradation of the 'martyrs' in the form of a quasi-philosophical monologue delivered by an old woman to a soon-to-be victim that makes about as much sense as Coleman Francis's crazed rumblings in Yucca Flats, it becomes painfully apparent that Martyrs will stand or fall with its premise. To what point are we seeing a young girl being brutalized for thirty minutes? Is there anything to it besides carwreck voyeurism? I won't spoil the ending but it must be experienced in all its "oh, no you didn't" glory to be believed.

I find nothing transgressive and powerful about an ugly skinhead brutalizing a helpless young girl for thirty minutes. Not only is the premise of the film flimsy but its juvenile attempts at intellectualizing pain and torture are nothing more than a paper-thin facade trying to mask what is essentially nothing more than another hedonistic torture flick. It's not about 'breaking the rules' or 'crossing a line' as some have put it, Cannibal Holocaust did both without resorting to Martyrs' lame black and white morality, without preying on the audience's sympathy in such a blatant fashion as to make Steven Spielberg seem like a subtle dramatist.

Let's not kid ourselves. At the end of the day there are no insights from this movie to be gained on human nature or the essence of violence. When all veils are torn down, we see Martyrs for what it is: an exercise in gratuitous violence dressed in fancy clothes. Ugly and bleak, yes, but for all the wrong reasons (this coming from a big fan of ugly, bleak films). If you're willing to spend your time watching something harrowing and depressing (and I applaud you for deviating from Hollywood's bubblegum glitz), then why not do it within the context of a narrative film that has a premise to prove and a point to make instead of a copout ending? Isn't that what we see movies for?