Fissures

Colour, 35 mm
France, 2006, 87 min
Section: Variety Critics’ Choice

Synopsis

Pushing the audience’s suspension of disbelief to the limit, debut writer-helmer Alanta Kavaite’s Fissures has a documentary sound recorder figure out who killed her mother by using her skills to listen to sounds from the past… Kavaite deftly uses devices from the playbooks of French masters Henri-Georges Clouzot and Claude Chabrol as well as from Brian De Palma’s Blow Out to construct a mystery yarn with cinematic twists. As ridiculous as concept may be, it achieves some credibility by the sheer will of Emilie Dequenne’s extremely determined performance, and an elaborate series of flashbacks matching the sounds she picks up.